


Sink or Swim

by GinnyPotterr



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Gen, Half sister, Half-Siblings, Idk she cries a lot, Minor Character Death, More tags will be added as I go along, SPN - Freeform, SPN Sisfic, Sister - Freeform, Supernatural - Freeform, Supernatural sister, Swearing, Underage Drinking, Winchester Sister, sisfic, younger sister
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-28 22:19:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 52,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7659025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinnyPotterr/pseuds/GinnyPotterr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being the youngest of four siblings is hard for anyone, but being the youngest Winchester is even worse. Lily is the younger sister of Dean, Sam, and Adam Winchester. When their father went missing two years ago, the four Winchester siblings were forced to band together to figure out his whereabouts. Now dad is dead, Dean has only a year to live, and no one knows how to cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! So this is, hopefully, going to be my first chaptered fanfic! I'm super excited about this! I have been developing this story/character for over a year now and I'm so glad that I can finally publish this (even if it only is one chapter right now)! Anyway, updates will be slow, sadly, as I am not someone who can write chapters super quickly. This chapter takes place during the pilot, but the next chapter will be season 3 ( + flashbacks). Honestly the only reason i'm doing it this way is that I wrote this whole chapter out before I decided to start in season 3 and I wasn't about to not use this lmao. Anyway, this is also 100% unbeta'd so I hope it's okay in that aspect! I hope you all enjoy Lily's story!

**PROLOGUE**

A blur of reds, oranges, and yellows was all that could be seen through the dirt-specked back windows of the '67 Impala. Autumn had officially arrived a few weeks before, causing the change in leaf colors and the drop in temperature. The air outside was nearly always crisp and cold, and Lily couldn't help but enjoy it. She loved wearing jeans and her hoodies and over sized jackets that she had stolen from her older brothers. Wearing her typical outfit during the summer months was brutal, especially in the south, and in her opinion her life was already hard enough without the added discomfort.

Lily and her family were hunters of the supernatural: ghosts, werewolves, demons, etc. Practically every 'legend' out there was true in one way or another, and they hunted them. This definitely wasn't the easiest life, nor the safest. Lily couldn't count the amount of times her dad or one of her three older brothers had come back from a hunt all bruised up and bleeding. That was just a part of hunting, a part of their life. She herself had even been hurt. On her first ever hunt the month before she had broken two of her ribs because she hadn't followed her father's orders to a T. She had been slacking, not paying enough attention, and the ghost they had been hunting had caught her off guard, throwing her into one of the nearby graves and busting up her ribs.

Despite her dislike for the job, she knew she couldn't leave. One of her older brothers, Sam, had left them when Lily was seven for college and she could see how his departure had affected their family; It had broken them. How could she leave after seeing what Sam's disappearance had done to them? So, no matter how much she wanted out, she couldn't leave them.

Maybe his departure wouldn't have hurt them all so much if Sam hadn't completely cut them off from his life. No phone calls, no text messages, nothing. It had been complete radio silence from him for the past four years. And it wasn't like Lily or her older brother Adam hadn't tried; for the first few months after Sam had left all the duo did was call him. But he never answered them and they soon gave up trying, growing to resent him for abandoning them.

And now their dad was missing.

And their eldest brother, Dean, was forcing them to get Sam's help.

And all Lily wanted was to forget all about the brother that had left them.

If their father wasn't missing, Lily would've never agreed to go to Stanford to see Sam; she would've had to have been literally dragged into the car by Dean. She resented Sam, even though he just wanted a normal life. He could've called her back. He could've been there for her.

"How long until we stop for food?" Lily asked, whining slightly from her seat in the back of the car. Her favorite (and only) pillow was tucked underneath her head, and she had kicked her battered-up converse sneakers to the floor. Laying across her stomach was her favorite book, _Charlotte's Web_. Her copy was torn and falling apart; a result of being read all the time and being from Goodwill. Their father rarely ever bought anything new, and most of the new things were given to Dean, as he was the eldest, or Lily, as she was the only girl. Adam and Sam had always been given the short end of the stick; neither of them had ever gotten anything new growing up.

"We'll stop at a diner around five, Lils," Dean replied, before turning the volume knob on the radio and blasting ' _Renegade_ ' by Styx. He began tapping his hands on the steering wheel to the beat of the song.

Lily groaned, sitting up and pouting. "That's two more hours!" She complained. Dean pretended that he couldn't hear her over the music, while their brother Adam had his music blasting through his headphones from his mp3 player. She could hear the beat of ' _Highway to Hell'_ by ACDC even from her seat in the back of the car.

Lily was definitely closest to Adam, out of all three of her brothers. It may have had something to do with the small age distance of only three years, or it could just be because they understood each other perfectly. They both had gone through somewhat similar experiences and were both somewhat outsiders even in their own family. Either way, Adam and Lily were each other's best friend and they were pretty close for siblings. Considering the fact that neither Lily nor Adam could have actual friends due to their nomadic lifestyle, they were each other's only friends, really.

It wasn't like they weren't friends with Dean, or that they loved him any less than they did each other, it was just that Dean was pretty much their father at this point. Dean had raised Sam, Adam, and Lily while their father had been off hunting and searching for revenge for his wife's murder. Their father was more of a trainer or drill sergeant than a father; he taught them to shoot a gun and to fight and to throw knives and to make their own bullets and to salt and burn graves. Dean was the one who taught them how to tie their shoes and helped them learn to read and made them dinner and helped them with their homework and healed their injuries and went to their parent-teacher conferences.

Lily, being twelve, took Dean for granted.

Two hours later the 1967 Impala was pulling into the parking lot of some cheap diner. All three of them grabbed their weapons: Dean and Adam with their favorite handguns while Lily took the knife Dean had gotten her for her twelfth birthday. They entered the diner, after hiding their weapons in the insides of their jackets, and took a booth in a secluded corner, just like they always did.

"Do we really have to go get Sam?" Lily asked, a whine seeping into her tone, again. "I mean, we haven't even heard from him, let alone seen him, in the past four years. Can't we find Dad without him?"

"She's right, Dean, we don't need Sam to find Dad," Adam added, looking up from the diner's menu. "For all we know, he could be a really rusty hunter by now."

"Yeah," She agreed with her brother. "Plus, Adam and I are both totally capable of hunting, and we could totally find Dad without Sam. Let's just screw this and go trace Dad's last steps or somethin'."

"Look, I know you guys are mad at Sam or whatever, but he's family," Dean spoke, there was a certain sadness in his voice at this.

"Bullshit, Dean," Adam spat. "Sam doesn't care about us, anymore. If he did he wouldn't have ignored mine and Lils' calls and messages. We don't need him."

Dean glared at his youngest brother, his eyebrows furrowed in anger. "We're going to Stanford tomorrow, finding Sam, and then we're gonna find Dad - all four of us - together."

Lily couldn't help but roll her eyes at Dean's verdict, but neither she nor Adam said anything. She flipped through the diner's menu only to figure out if they had her usual - chicken fingers and a chocolate milkshake. From her nine years of crappy diner experiences, she found that chicken fingers were always the safest option.

"Could I take your orders or do you need a couple more minutes?" A blonde waitress asked, smiling at the trio. Lily couldn't help but think that this girl was quite pretty. Her long, blonde hair fell in waves down her back, and her hazel eyes were incredibly bright. She had never really seen eyes like those before. Dean's were pretty close, but they weren't as bright as this girl's were.

"Lils." Dean's gruff voice startled her from her thoughts, and she noticed that not only were Adam and Dean staring at her, but so was the waitress, waiting for Lily's order.

She could feel the sudden heat in her cheeks as she realized what had happened. Had she really been staring at the woman the whole time? Shaking her head, she glanced back down at the menu, again, before placing her order. "Chicken fingers and a chocolate milkshake, please," She mumbled, but the waitress seemed to understand, as she scrawled something down on her notepad, threw all three of them a soft smile, then walked off.

"Lils, are you feeling alright?" Adam asked her, his tone somewhat playful.

She chuckled. "Yeah, I'm fine, I must've just zoned out or somethin'."

Once the trio of siblings were done with their meal they were back in the Impala, on their way to see their brother for the first time in years. It wasn't until hours later, long after it had gone dark, that they reached Stanford. The Impala rumbled into the parking lot of Sam's apartment building, the car unusually silent as Dean had turned off his music. Adam and Lily had both fallen asleep, Lily sprawled out across the back seat while Adam had curled up in the passenger seat.

"Lils, Ads, wake up," Dean mumbled, shaking Lily and Adam's shoulders. After a few minutes the three siblings were out of the car and walking to find the correct apartment. Lily and Adam looked as if they were half dead. Lily's long, brown hair was frizzy and tangled from sleep, while Adam's short, blonde quiff was flattened against his forehead. In short, they both looked absolutely ridiculous. Dean would've laughed at them if he wasn't so focused on Sam.

"This is it," Dean whispered, reaching the correct door. "Lils, do your thing."

All four of the Winchester siblings could pick locks easily, but it was Lily's specialty and she liked to do it any chance she got. Lily nodded, pulled her lock-picking kit out from her jacket pocket and crouched down in front of the lock. About thirty seconds later they were in, and they all moved stealthily through the apartment. Adam and Lily followed Dean, as neither of them knew where they were going, though they were pretty sure their older brother didn't really know either.

"Why didn't we just knock?" Lily questioned, her voice only a whisper. As it was currently two o'clock in the morning, they were all trying their best to be quiet. But, they clearly weren't quiet enough.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Dean was punched in the face. Dean quickly retaliated and began to fight whoever the person was. Lily and Adam quickly moved out of the way, both of them assuming who the other person was. Despite the darkness of the room, none of the punches thrown missed their target. Dean soon gained the upper hand and pinned Sam to the ground . . . at least they were guessing it was Sam.

"Woah, easy, tiger," Dean spoke. A grin reached its way onto his face.

"Dean?" Sam asked, confused.

Dean just laughed at his little brother's expense.

"You scared the crap out of me!" Sam exclaimed, not necessarily angry.

"That's 'cause you're outta practice." Dean smirked.

Sam caught Dean off guard and pinned Dean to the floor.

"Or not. Now get off me."

Sam easily got to his feet and helped his older brother up. He didn't notice Adam or Lily standing off to the side, which was just fine to both of them. They had twin scowls on their faces, neither one thrilled to see Sam again.

"What are you doing here?" Sam asked Dean, confused still.

"Well, I was looking for a beer." Dean smirked.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sam asked again, wanting a serious answer.

"Alright, we need to talk," Dean replied, his tone grieve and serious.

"Uh - the phone?"

Adam barked out a laugh, though there was no humor behind it. Sam, not knowing anyone else was in the room, jumped and whipped around to face his younger siblings for the first time in four years.

"As if you ever pick up the phone when we call," Adam snapped. His arms were crossed over his chest, his jaw was set, and his light eyes glared daggers into Sam's similar ones.

"Adam, Lily, I -" Sam began, but Adam cut him off.

"Oh, so you _do_ remember our names?" He snapped, again, his tone very sarcastic and bitter. Adam knew he was probably being a bit too harsh, but it had been four _years_ of radio silence from him. He had been gone so long that Adam barely had any good memories of him left, as he had only been eleven at the time.

"Ads," Sam tried again.

"No," Adam cut him off once more. "I don't want to hear whatever fucking pathetic excuse you have. I could deal with the fact that you went to college, but Jesus Christ, Sam, you acted like we didn't exist! A phone call once in awhile would've been nice!" His voice cracked. "You never picked up the phone!"

Everyone was eerily silent after Adam ended his rant. By the end of it his voice had gone from quiet to extremely loud - practically screaming. It was only two in the morning, and no one would have been surprised if Sam's neighbors came knocking.

Lily put her arm on her brother's and gave him a soft smile. She agreed with everything he'd said, and she knew that Sam deserved all of it, but she couldn't help but feel like he could have said it nicer. Though Lily wasn't the nicest person on the planet or anything, she was extremely empathetic and wasn't a big fan of conflict between her family members. A part of her did wish she could just forgive Sam, but she knew he didn't deserve to be forgiven just yet. Her heart was being pulled in two different directions - one was forgiving Sam and the other was making him feel as isolated and upset as he had made them feel. Adam clearly had no problem with calling Sam out for what he did.

"Sam?" The tension dissipated from the air as an extremely tall woman walked into the room. She had long, curly blonde hair and was dressed in short-shorts and a cut-off Smurf's t-shirt. She was about the same height as Dean, and her legs were probably around the same length as his as well. How anyone could shave legs as long as hers Lily didn't know.

"Jess. Hey. Dean, Adam, Lily this is my girlfriend Jessica," Sam introduced, not meeting Adam's eyes as he addressed his siblings.

"Your brothers and sister?" Jess inquired, smiling.

Sam nodded, while Dean smirked at Jess and moved closer to her. "You know, I gotta tell you; you are completely outta my brothers' league."

Lily rolled her eyes, though a smirk tugged at her lips. "Try to keep it in your pants, would'ya, Dean-o?"

Dean tossed his sister a glare. "What did I tell you about calling me Dean-o?" He grumbled, but he wasn't truly angry, just a bit annoyed.

"Just let me put something on," Jess said, glancing at Sam before moving to head back to her bedroom.

"No, no, no, I wouldn't dream of it." Dean stopped her. "Seriously."

Lily crinkled her nose in disgust. "Dean-o." She smirked. "Please do everyone a favor and stop being creepy."

Dean threw her another glare at the nickname, but chose to ignore it this time. "Well, listen, I've got to borrow your boyfriend here and talk about some private family business," He said to Jess, walking back to where Sam, Adam, and Lily stood. "But, uh, nice meetin' you."

Jess smiled at him, clearly trying to be friendly, but it looked somewhat forced.

"No," Sam said, standing next to Jess and sliding his arm around her waist. "No, whatever you wanna say you guys can say it in front of her."

Lily rolled her eyes, annoyed at how they wouldn't be able to just come out and say it with Jess here. Though Lily was extremely happy that Sam had found such a seemingly great girl at such a prestigious school, she was sad that he was so happy without her, Dean, and Adam. She knew it was selfish of her, but she was jealous. Jealous that Sam was so happy, jealous that he got to be with a girl he clearly loved, and jealous that he had gotten out of the hunting business. Though she never voiced this dream aloud, not even to Adam, Lily wanted to leave, too. She wanted to go to college once she graduated High School; it had been a dream of hers ever since Sam had begun to talk about it all those years ago.

She knew her dream may have had something to do with the fact that she used to practically worship Sam when they were younger, but Lily had also yearned for a somewhat normal life like she used to have. Well, a normal life like she assumed she had had. Lily had lived with her mother for the first three years of her life, none of which she really remembered. Then, a month after her third birthday, her mother was killed. The image of her mother's death still plagued Lily's mind to this day. She still, even about nine years later, found herself waking up in the middle of the night, screaming and crying with beads of sweat collecting at her forehead. Her mother's death was the first memory that Lily had, making it her only memory of her mother. She knew next to nothing about her mother. All she knew was that she had brown hair, brown eyes, and that her first language was Spanish. John would never talk about her, ashamed that he had another child, let alone two other children, without his wife.

Dean sighed, sending Lily and Adam a look before turning back to Sam. "Okay, um, Dad hasn't been home in a few days," He spoke, trying to stay as vague as possible, assuming that Jess had no clue about what the Winchester's did for a living.

"So, he's working overtime on a Miller Time shift. He'll stumble back in sooner or later," Sam replied.

Lily rolled her eyes at her brother. He wasn't understanding. "Sam, Dad's on a hunting trip, and he hasn't been home in a few days," Lily clarified, wanting to get this show on the road. She and Sam stared each other down for a moment, Sam's facial expression not changing as he took the information in.

"Jess," He said, still staring into Lily's dark eyes. "Excuse us."

Dean, Sam, Adam, and Lily all climbed down the stairs of Sam's apartment building, arguing with one another. Well, it was mostly Sam arguing with his three siblings more than anything else.

"Come on," Sam complained. "You three can't just break into my apartment in the middle of the night and expect me to hit the road with you."

"Hey, it was Dean's idea!" Lily exclaimed, tossing a glare back at Sam over her shoulder. She turned back forward to watch her steps. "Besides, Adam and I were against even coming here to ask. And then I was the one who suggested we knocked instead of picking the lock, even if it is my favorite thing to do."

"Well, thanks for throwing me under the bus, Lils," Dean drawled, though his tone was sarcastic.

"No problem, Dean-o." She threw Dean a smirk.

Sam furrowed his eyebrows, though Lily wasn't looking back at him to notice. "Your favorite thing to do is pick locks?"

Lily tossed him another glare as they walked up the steps outside. "My favorite part of _hunting_ , you idiot."

"So, Sammy," Dean interrupted, while the group halted. Lily tossed him a glare for interrupting them, even if all they were doing was arguing. "Dad's missing. We need your help to find him."

"Remember the poltergeist in Amherst?" Sam questioned. "Or the Devil's Gates in Clifton?" Lily's eyebrows furrowed; she didn't remember either of those. "He was missing then, too, he's always missing, and he's always fine," He practically spat. It was obvious to everyone there that Sam was still angry with their father, and Lily honestly couldn't blame him. She would still be mad, too, if their father had said those terrible things to her. Though, she had a feeling she would be more upset than angry; their father could be an asshole.

Adam narrowed his eyes, his jaw set. "You don't know that he'll be okay. This could end up being the time that he doesn't come back."

"He has a track record of leaving for weeks or, Hell, sometimes even months, but he's always come back," Sam explained, still sounding a bit bitter. "What makes this time so different?'

"He hasn't called in weeks, sound like someone else you know?" Adam said, giving his brother an icy glare. In that moment, Lily could clearly see the resemblance between her two brothers, even if they were only half-brothers. For one thing, both of them had blue eyes. Adam's were more icy and cold, while Sam's were deeper and darker, but they both had blue eyes, none the less. They both had their jaws set, anger pulsing through them. And, although Adam was only at a height of 5'7" (he would grow more, Lily was sure of it), he always held himself at his full height, towering over people (well, over her), just like Sam did.

"Alright, you two, stop it," Dean intervened, breaking up a family fight just like he always did. "Sam, are you gonna come with us or no?"

"I'm not."

"Why not?"

"I swore I was done hunting," Sam spoke, his face softening. "For good."

"Come on, it wasn't easy but it wasn't that bad." Dean rolled his eyes.

"Yeah?" Sam scoffed. "When I told Dad that I was scared of the thing in my closet he gave me a .45."

"Well, what was he supposed to do?" Dean asked, always the one to defend their father no matter what.

"I was nine years old!" Sam scoffed, clearly not believing what he was hearing. "He was supposed to say 'don't be afraid of the dark'."

"'Don't be afraid of the dark', what, are you kidding me?" Dean exclaimed, taking his turn to glare at Sam. "Of course you should be afraid of the dark, you know what's out there!"

"That's comforting," Lily mumbled to herself, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Yeah, I know, but the way we grew up after Mom was killed," Sam continued. "And Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her, but we still haven't found the damned thing."

Lily suddenly felt out of place, and, by the way Adam tensed up beside her, he did too. Sam and Dean both had a special connection with one another because they were full siblings. They had the same mother and the same father and had been with one another their whole lives. Lily and Adam, on the other hand, were their half-siblings. They didn't have the same experiences as Sam and Dean did and it made the two feel like outsiders in their own family. It was a frequent conversation the two had had when they were younger.

"And so we kill everything we can find," Sam finished.

"And save a lot of people doing it, too," Dean added, still glaring at his brother, though there was no true anger behind it.

They stared each other down for a moment, the tension in the crisp October air was thick, and Lily just wanted to get out of there.

"You think Mom would've wanted this for us?"

Dean didn't respond. He quickly turned and walked off. They all knew that talk about their mothers was a touchy subject, and yet Sam did it anyway.

"Sam," Adam spat as they followed after Dean. "How would you know what your mom would've wanted for the two of you? She died when you were fucking six months old!" That made Sam and Dean both stop in their tracks and throw matching glares at their little brother. "Hell, all four of us lost our moms when we were really young, so don't pretend like you knew her, Sam, because we all know you don't remember a damned thing about her."

Lily knew what was going to happen before it did, but it still shocked her to some extent. Sam quickly drew his arm back and slapped Adam across the face so hard that it knocked him backwards a step. The resounding smack was extremely loud and echoed in the apartment's parking lot. Sam probably hadn't meant to do it, but that didn't mean he regretted it.

Adam glared up at Sam, clearly resisting the urge to rub his now reddening cheek. The tension in the air was even thicker than before; no one said anything for what seemed to be hours.

None of the Winchester kids were a stranger to being hit like that. John was always one for physical punishments, especially since the four of them didn't have very many privileges to take away in the first place. Just because Lily was the youngest and a girl didn't mean that she was exempt from the psychical punishments their father gave out, and Lily couldn't help but feel at least the slightest bit grateful that he treated her equally to her brothers.

"Don't you _dare_ talk about my mother like that," Sam sneered, giving Adam a death glare that would make any normal person piss their pants. But Adam wasn't normal, he was a Winchester. And, besides, he knew Sam and wasn't scared of him. At least, he pretended not to be. With one final glare towards his brother, Adam stormed off in the direction of the Impala.

"So," Lily broke the silence, awkwardly, once Adam was out of earshot. "I really don't care if you come with us or not, Sam, you made your choice four years ago and you'll probably pick the same one now."

Sam scoffed. "I was just going to college, Lily, it was Dad who said if I leave that I should stay gone," He spoke. "And that's what I'm doing."

"You still abandoned us, Sam. If you hadn't abandoned us you would've answered our phone calls." Lily wasn't sure when she started standing up to people like this, she had never been very brave before, but she liked it.

She knew her newfound bravery may have stemmed from going on her first real hunt a month beforehand. It had been that simple salt and burn with her father, the one where she had gotten hurt. It hadn't been the best experience, and John had been so disappointed and angry with her.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" Sam asked, hoping for his little sister's forgiveness. "You're right, I should've answered your calls. I'll pick up from now on, I swear."

Lily was quiet for a moment, thinking over what he had said. "I want to forgive you, Sam, I really do, but I haven't heard anything from you in a little over four years. I was _seven_ when you left! I needed all my big brothers there for me!" She exclaimed, her tone turning whiny, again, much to her dismay. She quickly headed back to the Impala, hopping into the back seat next to Adam.

"You alright?" She asked him, after a moment of silence.

"Yeah," Adam replied, not looking at her.

"You know you shouldn't've pushed him so far," She remarked, trying to keep her tone casual.

"Whatever," Adam scoffed. "He left us for four years, I think he deserves some sort of karma or something."

Lily nodded. "Yeah, but you know talking about their mom is a touchy subject. You had that slap coming whether you like it or not."

Adam sighed, always the stubborn one. "Probably, but that doesn't mean I'll apologize or anything."

Lily didn't say anything else, and she and Adam just sat there in silence. It wasn't an awkward or tense silence, but a comfortable one. She was always comfortable around Adam; he was her best friend, after all.


	2. 2 Years Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been almost two years since Dean, Adam, and Lily went to pick Sam up from Stanford and so much has changed; Dad is dead (but so is Yellow Eyes), Sam had died but been brought back, and Dean had sold his soul. Everyone is dealing with Dean's impending death slightly differently; Dean acts like he doesn't care, Sam tries not to think about it, Adam is devastated but hides it well, and Lily is angry and is starting to act out. Dean tries to get in as many fun things as he can before his time runs out, leaving Adam and Lily with Bobby and dragging Sam off to bars. They meet back up with Sam and Dean to work on a hunt, but it goes so wrong.

**CHAPTER ONE: 2 YEARS LATER**

Nightmare plagued nights were all that Lily had these days, falling asleep for an hour before the growls of the hellhounds and her brother's screams of agony woke her. Sleep was becoming a distant memory. Every night she woke up multiple times, screaming and crying, her sweat covered body shivering and her blankets kicked to the floor. The images of her brother's death were pierced in her mind; his scarlet blood splattered on the floor, his guts ripped out, and his lifeless eyes staring open at the ceiling. She had taken to just pulling all-nighters instead; it hurt less just staying awake on her own than seeing those gruesome images over and over again.    


Dean wasn't dead, but he only had about a year left before he was. Lily knew it was going to come fast; that his death date would sneak up on them. One day he'd have six months left and, on what seemed like the next day, he'd only have one.    


She wasn't sure if she could handle that.    


Her brothers, all three of them, were her rocks. She didn't know what to do when one was missing. Sam's leaving when she was younger had hurt her. It left her broken and feeling as if something was missing. It left her wondering what she had done to drive him away, to cause him to never pick up the phone. It left her resentful and angry.   
Dean was different. Lily didn't view him as her brother or her friend, but rather as a father. Someone who took care of her, who fed her, who taught her how to tie her shoes, who helped her with her homework to the best of his abilities. He helped her learn what it was like to have a parent who was there for her. He was her father in her eyes, and losing him would hurt like Hell.   


Ever since he had made his demon deal, Dean had been more reckless. Lily noticed when he didn't come home at night or when he came back reeking of sex and cheap booze. She knew he was trying to 'live' as much as he could before his deal was up, and she could sympathize, but she just wanted to spend every waking moment with him; to cram every moment he was going to miss into his last months and it was ridiculous and she was being clingy, she knew that for sure, but she couldn't help it. He was her brother, her father figure, and she couldn't picture life without him.   


Dean had left Lily and Adam with Bobby while he dragged Sam off to different bars practically every night. It stung a little that Sam got to spend more time with Dean than she did. Her jealousy was rearing its ugly head; she wanted Dean for herself. She wanted Dean to spend his last few months with  _ her _ . 

Nothing could have prepared Lily for Sam’s death, which she had taken extremely hard, but to then find out that Sam was back alive and that Dean had sold his soul and had a one-way ticket to Hell? It had been too much.

 

_“Sam,” Lily spoke, shocked. Two seconds ago her older brother had been_ _dead,_ _his then decaying body laying on the old mattress they had found, and now he was sitting up and looking at her? An immense amount of emotions fluttered through her all at once; she was, of course, happy. She wanted to jump into Sam’s arms and never let go. But she was also tremendously confused. Sam had been dead, gone, killed, lifeless, whatever way you could say it. He hadn’t been alive for two whole days, and now he was suddenly sitting up and breathing and living again? It made no sense. She turned to Adam, who was sitting in the wooden chair next to her, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. What the hell was going on?_

_ “Hey guys,” Sam spoke, confused and groggy. He reached to his back where he had been stabbed, grimacing as he touched the now-healing wound. It had been fatal. He had been dead for two days already. It was completely impossible for him to come back to life after two days. What the  _ _ hell _ _ was going on? It couldn’t be a shapeshifter or a demon or  _ _ any _ _ of the supernatural beings Lily could think of. She ticked off every kind of supernatural creature she could and was forced to come to the conclusion that Sam was actually alive again. Somehow . . . _

_ Adam and Lily seemed to come to the same theory at the same time. They both turned to look at one another, in a mixture of disbelief and anguish. Had Dean done this? Had Dean . . . sold his  _ _ soul _ _? They both knew that Dean had gone out about fifteen minutes ago, after his breakdown that they had overheard, but they never expected him to do something so freaking stupid. They just thought he was going to get some air. Then again, they had never seen Dean in as much pain as he had been in when Sam died in his arms. They should’ve known he was going to do something stupid, something controlled by his grief and nothing else.  _

_ It wasn’t like Lily hadn’t thought of a demon deal herself or anything, and if she knew Adam like she felt she did, the thought had passed through his mind as well, but she knew that Sam wouldn’t want any of them to give up their own lives (and spend all of eternity in Hell) just to bring him back. Though she hadn’t truly considered it for herself as she was scared; the thought of going to Hell itself terrified the young girl and she tried not to think about anyone she loved going there. She could only hope that Sam was brought back by something else,  _ _ anything _ _ else, because she did not want her eldest brother to spend eternity in Hell. Especially not after their father was stuck in Hell for doing the same exact thing about a year before. _

_ “Come on, Dean, I’ve got some more books in the truck,” Bobby spoke, silently telling Dean that they needed to talk. The mood had been especially tense since Sam had come back to life. Everyone, except Sam, knew that Dean must’ve done something to bring his brother back. Everyone knew that Dean had always been the self-sacrificing type and everyone knew that Dean would do anything for any of his siblings. It made sense that Dean had been the one to do this. That is  _ _ if _ _ he did it; Lily was still clinging onto that small shred of hope that Dean, or anyone, hadn’t made a deal for Sam. But nothing else made sense. _

_ “Lils and I will help, Bobby.” Neither Adam nor Lily had been able to get Dean alone since Sam had come back, and they both knew that he had done that on purpose. He knew that they wouldn’t say anything in front of Sam.  _

_ Adam and Lily grabbed their jackets and quickly shrugged them on as they followed Dean and Bobby outside to the Salvage yard. The old, beat up cars surrounding them brought Lily back to her childhood. Memories of playing hide-and-go-seek or tag with Adam danced through her mind. It was different walking through the rows of cars now. Everything in life had been so much simpler back then, even if she wasn’t like the other kids at school or that her father wasn’t around or that she had to train to hunt practically every day. It had all been so much easier than her father’s death or Sam’s death or Dean’s maybe-death (that was  _ _ if _ _ he had sacrificed himself . . .  _ _ if _ _ ). She may have been a child only a couple of years ago, but so much had changed since then. _

_ The group walked a good ways away from Bobby’s house, none of them wanting Sam to overhear the upcoming conversation. How long they were planning on hiding his death from him she didn’t know, but she figured it would be until he figured it out himself. And he would figure it out; Sam wasn’t stupid. Bobby lead the group to an open area before he whipped around to face Dean, his gruff voice loud and intimidating.   _

_ “You stupid ass!” He yelled. “What did you do?”  _

_ Lily eyed Dean, a cross between angry and grief-stricken. She really didn’t know what to say or what to feel or what to do. If he had made a demon deal he had ten years to live, at most. Only ten years. He would die at age thirty-seven and then spend the rest of eternity being tortured in Hell. Dean didn’t deserve that fate; Dean deserved a good life with a white picket fence and a wife and a couple of kids, or whatever the Hell he wanted. A safe and happy life. _

_ Lily was silently praying to every god she could think of that Dean hadn’t made a deal. That it was something else that had brought Sam back.  _ _ Anything _ _ else.  _

_ Dean didn’t say anything, he just looked down to the ground, his eyes shining with unshed tears.  _

_ Bobby roughly grabbed Dean by his jacket and pulled him closer. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” He looked close to crying as well. Lily’s own eyesight became blurry as these two men, whom she admired and looked up to so much, lost their resolve and cried. She wasn’t sure what it was, but seeing people who were usually so strong in their moments of weakness made her cry too.  _

_         She looked to Adam and noticed his eyes, the bags underneath sunken and dark, welling up with tears as well.  Lily tried to blink back her tears, but that set them free. She felt the itchiness on her cheeks as the tears dripped down. _

_ Dean continued to stay silent. Lily scanned his face, taking in his features as if it were the first time she had ever seen him. His eyes were a lighter shade of green, almost a yellow-y color, but had swirls and specks of goldish brown as well. The bags under his eyes were dark and prominent, but she could still see the freckles that dotted his cheeks and nose. She stared at him like she was never going to see him again. _

_ “You made a deal, didn’t you?” Bobby asked him. Everyone wanted an an answer but, at the same time, no one did. Dean  _ _ still _ _ didn’t say anything, truly confirming everyone’s theories and fears. Lily felt her heart sink and her breathing quicken.  _

_ No. _

_ “How long did they give ‘ya?”  _

_ “Bobby,” Dean finally said.  _

_ “HOW LONG?” Bobby screamed.  _

_ Lily grabbed Adam’s hand, needing some form of comfort and knowing that he did as well. She didn’t dare take her eyes off Dean, almost as if if she looked away he would suddenly disappear; dragged off by the Hellhounds or some other supernatural creature.  _

_ Dean glanced at Adam and Lily, the pain in his eyes clear. “One year.” _

_ No. _

_ Time seemed to slow down, nothing around her seemed real. It felt as if she had been killed a thousand times over. Dean was dying in one year. In one year her eldest brother, who was very much a father figure to her, was going to be sent to Hell itself. All she could feel was real and true and raw anguish. Dean was going to be tortured for the rest of eternity and she could do nothing to stop it. Her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the gravel ground, letting go of Adam’s hand, successfully cutting open her jeans and her skin on her knees. She didn’t notice the sharp pain or blood from her knees, she didn’t notice Adam running off, she didn’t notice what Dean or Bobby were doing, all she could focus on was the pure grief and pain spreading through her.  _

_ NO. _

_ This couldn’t be happening.  _

_ She was sobbing; large, powerful sobs that were shaking her whole body. None of this was real. She was having a nightmare. She tried to convince herself that none of this was really happening; that Sam had never died, that Dean hadn’t sold his soul, and that their broken family wasn’t as broken as it could be. But then there were arms wrapping around her shoulders, and someone was trying to comfort her.  _

_ And then she was angry, a boiling anger that had her seeing red. She shoved the arms away from her and shakily got to her feet. Her head felt heavier than it did before, her face fuzzy and tingly, a result of crying so hard. She saw Dean standing in front of her, trying to give her some sort of explanation, and before she even knew what she was doing, she was shoving him backwards. Her weaker frame could only shove him back one step, but his expression was pained. He didn’t push her back or say anything. He only stood there, looking thoroughly defeated. _

_ “What is wrong with you?” Her voice cracked. “I could eventually handle the fact that Sam was dead because he wasn’t in Hell, he wasn’t being tortured, and he wasn’t in any pain anymore, but you will be! How am I supposed to live knowing that you’re being tortured in Hell forever?”  _

 

Lily could barely stand to let Dean out of her sight, fearing that in those isolated moments the hellhounds would come knocking. It was ridiculous, Lily knew, but she couldn’t help it. Dean was going to die, but she would be damned if she didn’t try to stop it. She just had to think of a way first. 

She had thought of a demon deal, but that would be counter-productive, considering she  _ and _ Sam would end up dead if she reversed Dean’s deal. She had thought about taking his place, but she wasn’t sure if she could get herself to. She was still terrified at the thought of going to Hell, but she figured if Dean could be brave enough to do it for Sam then she could try and be brave enough to do it for him. 

The biggest problem was getting a demon to agree to the deal. 

She was getting a big fat load of nothing and she was getting more and more frustrated with each passing day. Her first day back at school she had been in a fist fight, putting all her anger and fear and sadness together and taking it out on some mean girl in her class. It wasn’t the most effective way of dealing with everything, maybe she wasn’t even really dealing at all, but taking out her frustrations on someone who deserved it had made her feel the slightest bit better. Not that the better feeling had lasted long. 

Dean, however, was acting the complete opposite way. Instead of closing off the world and trying different ways to get out of his deal, he was making the most of the limited time he had left; going to bars, getting drunk, eating the greasiest of the greasy food, and partaking in all the one-night-stands he could. It would’ve sounded pretty fun to Lily too if Dean didn’t have a one-way ticket down under. 

Heavily contrasting to Lily, Adam seemed fine. He seemed  _ too _ fine. Lily knew that he was just bottling all his emotions inside instead of feeling them. Sooner or later he would blow, his anger and sadness being released in a violent way. She had seen it happen to him before, back when their father had died, and it wasn’t pretty. Violence was always his way of dealing, and maybe she and him had that in common. 

While Dean had dragged Sam off to some skanky bar to pick up chicks the night before, Bobby had found a possible hunt just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska and Sam and Dean were going to meet the trio there in the Impala. The sudden separation from Sam and Dean put Lily on edge. Anything could happen to them at the bar or on the road. If Dean happened to die before his deal was up the Hellhounds would still show. It terrified Lily that she was so helpless; that she couldn’t do anything to save her family.

She, Bobby, and Adam had arrived first, even though they had stopped to pick up breakfast sandwiches at a passing diner. Lily and Adam were still eating theirs as the trio stood in front of Bobby’s truck, waiting for Sam and Dean to finally show up. They finally heard the low rumble of the Impala over the loud sounds of the Cicadas, and soon saw said car driving down the dirt road they had parked on. Dean parked and he and Sam walked over to the trio, Dean eating a bacon cheeseburger, though his was wrapped in black and white checkerboard-printed paper.

“Dean!” Lily exclaimed, running towards her brother and tackling him in a tight hug. Though confused, Dean returned the hug, though they couldn’t hold onto one another very well as they both had food in one of their hands. Lily breathed in the scent of Dean’s cologne and his cheap soap, mixed with the smell of leather from his jacket and the bacon from his cheeseburger. It all just smelled so  _ Dean.  _ Lily grinned into his jacket, savoring the moment. They held the hug for a moment too long, as Lily hadn’t wanted to let go, before they released one another. 

“Damn, how come I never get greeted with that much enthusiasm?” Adam, who had just recently turned seventeen, laughed. His voice had dropped a few octaves in the past few years, now almost matching Sam and Dean’s own low tones. Lily tossed him a playful glare but said nothing, she just playfully hit him on the shoulder for his remark. 

“Well, when you buy me food all the time like he does I’ll start hugging you like that,” She replied, smirking at him before eating the last bite of her sandwich. 

“So, we’re eating bacon cheeseburgers for breakfast, are we?” Bobby drawled, though there was a hint of amusement in his voice. 

“Well, sold my soul, got a year to live. I ain’t sweatin’ the cholesterol.” Dean was being snarky, as usual, but Lily couldn’t make herself find it funny. He was going to  _ die _ and yet he was acting as if nothing was happening; cracking jokes and making smart remarks to everyone as if nothing were wrong, that nothing was going to  _ be _ wrong. It was all so typically Dean, but it still made Lily feel even worse. 

“Not funny,” Lily snapped. She crossed her arms over her chest and sent her eldest brother a glare. Why couldn’t he take this seriously?  _ He _ was the one with his life on the line, not her. She just wanted him to give a damn about his own life for once, was that too much to ask?  

“Lils, it was just a joke.”

“So, Bobby, we got a biblical plague here or what?” Sam asked, purposely cutting their conversation short. 

Lily let it go for now, seeing as they had more pressing matters on hand than Dean’s attitude about his deal. 

“Well, let’s find out.” They all turned to the house next to them, starting to walk towards it as the conversation continued. The house was white, the paint old and slightly chipping in some areas, and seemed to be abandoned. The bushes and grass were overgrown and Lily noticed that there was a pile of mail on the doorstep. “Looks like the swarm’s ground zero.”

They reached the porch of the rundown house and Dean began knocking roughly on the wooden door. 

“Couldn’t I’ve just picked the lock?” Lily asked, her eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. Despite the fact that lock-picking wasn’t the most exciting thing, especially in hunting, Lily still really enjoyed it. Maybe it was because she was good at it, and she usually liked things that she was naturally good at, or maybe it was because it was like solving a problem. Trying to figure out the right pattern of the lock as quickly as possible was interesting and challenging, two things that entertained the girl. 

Everyone ignored her.

“CANDYGRAM!” Dean shouted, knocking on the dark wood of the door again. 

When no sound from inside the house was heard, Dean nodded to Lily, silently giving her the  _ ok _ to pick the lock. Grinning, Lily bent down to the lock, which didn’t take much considering her 5’3” frame, and pulled out her lock-picking kit. Seconds later the door swung open, and Lily cast a smug smile to her brothers and Bobby over her shoulder.

Before anyone could protest, she slipped inside the house first, but immediately regretted the decision. She had suddenly began to cough and her hand flew up to cover her nose and mouth. The house smelled strongly of something rotten. The pungent scent made her eyes water and it took all her self control not to run back out the front door. Whatever was inside the house was dead, like  _ really _ dead, and the thought and smell of whatever it was began making her gag. 

She knew it wasn’t just her who could smell the disgusting scent as the boys followed her in and had the same reaction. “Ugh.” Adam covered his nose with the sleeve of his jacket, his face scrunching up in disgust.

“That’s awful,” Sam agreed, his face grimacing, but he kept hold of his gun in both hands.

“That _ so _ cannot be a good sign,” Dean added, resisting the urge to cover his own nose. 

Since she had been getting older, Lily had been allowed to go on more and more hunts (not the really dangerous ones or the ones that could get her in big trouble with the law), but still not as many as Adam was. As he was almost eighteen he could go on pretty much every hunt, but only didn’t when he had to go to school. Lily didn’t understand why he didn’t just drop out like Dean had and hunt full-time, but Adam wanted an education. It didn’t make any sense to her; Adam was probably going to be hunting the rest of his life, so why did having a High School diploma matter? Lily knew that, as soon as she was old enough, she was going to drop out. She saw no point in going when you were a hunter.

Bobby went to search the basement, Sam and Dean were to search the first floor, and Adam and Lily were told to search the second floor. Pulling a spare gun from the small of his back, Dean eyed the pair with a stern look and told them to be careful. He gave Lily the gun, as she didn’t have her own yet, and the two skillfully went upstairs, guns drawn and footsteps light, exactly like it had been drilled into them by their father and, later on, their brothers. 

Lily was surprised that her brothers, namely Dean, were even letting her be a part of searching the house. She figured it was because there was no immediate danger here, but she wasn’t going to complain. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

Staying quiet, the two nodded to one another and began searching the different upstairs rooms. Lily went into the main bedroom and could immediately tell that no one had been in there for a considerable amount of time. Dust covered practically every surface. The dressers, the windowsills, the ceiling fan, and even the bed had a thin layer of dust on them. After looking behind the curtains and underneath the bed, she turned to the closed closet door.  She stopped in front of it and mentally prepared herself for something to jump out at her. She quickly opened the door and aimed her gun, but nothing but dust came out from the closet. She sighed, relieved that she didn’t have to fight anyone or thing at the moment, and made her way back to the hallway where she met back up with Adam.

Lily raised her eyebrows at her much taller brother, inquisitively.  Adam shook his head negatively and the two made their way back downstairs to find Sam, Dean, and Bobby. 

After following the sound of Sam and Bobby’s voices, the sight they walked in on was one that Lily would soon try and forget. On the couch in the living room were three  _ very _ dead people. They were decomposing. Their skin was paper white and wrinkly, despite them being young, and their eyes were staring open, all with the same dead, haunting look in them. 

Lily gasped audibly at the sight and began thinking that her two breakfast sandwiches earlier had been a  _ very _ bad idea. Her stomach was churning, not only at the sight of the decomposing bodies before her, but also at the smell. The smell of death had become ten times stronger and it took everything that Lily had to not puke her guts out right then and there. 

Adam, however, hadn’t been able to hold his own breakfast in.

Chunks of his breakfast sandwich were now seeping into the ugly floral carpeting of the living room and it did nothing to control the incredibly strong smell of death that had already been occupying it. 

“Oh my god,” Lily moaned, disgusted. She and Adam had seen a lot of gross shit in their time, but this definitely took the cake. Lily wasn’t sure about all the gross things Sam, Dean, and Bobby had seen or smelled, but she knew this moment  _ had _ to be in their top five. It was just that disgusting.

The combined smell of the decomposing flesh and Adam’s barf  _ and  _ the sight of both sent Lily herself over the edge. Her own breakfast sandwiches were now betraying her. She puked right next to where Adam had, the throw up leaving that burning sensation in the back of her throat that she couldn’t stand.

And so, the two teens stood side by side, standing in their own puke while a family of three sat decomposing on the couch.

She couldn’t believe that this was actually her life.

Dean had suddenly gone into the classic Big Brother mode. “Okay, you two better sit down,” He directed, looking around the room for somewhere for his youngest siblings to sit. 

“Oh yeah, we’ll just sit on the dead people’s laps; I bet it’ll be real cosy.” Lily’s voice, although sounding shaky and weak from what just happened, was also practically oozing with sarcasm. 

“Okay, I’ll take you two to get fresh air in a minute.”

A rustling noise suddenly came from somewhere outside and the five hunters immediately went into action, despite the throwing up two of them had just done. They split up, each of them looking for the source of the noise, guns drawn and matching determined looks on their faces. 

The air outside was incredibly refreshing and Lily took several deep breaths, enjoying the coldness and freshness in her lungs. She was listening for whatever had made the noise, but all she could hear were those damn Cicadas. Cicadas had always freaked her out a bit, even in this line of work where they dealt with literal monsters, and this was no exception. The sound they made just freaked her out a little. 

The sound of punches being thrown saved her from the sound of Cicadas, but obviously worried her. She raced back to the house, meeting Adam at the back steps. He had the same exact worried expression on his face as she did. They made their way to the other side of the house and were surprised to see two other people, presumably hunters, speaking to Bobby in a friendly tone, while Dean laid on the ground in pain.

“Uh . . . what’s going on?” Adam asked, his thick eyebrows furrowing in confusion. 

Bobby was grinning at the two new arrivals while they all ignored Dean, who was now groaning in pain. Lily would’ve laughed at his expense on a normal day, but he was going to die soon and she felt guilty. She quickly went and helped her brother up, clapping him on the back once he stood straight again. She gave him a soft smile and he gave her a quick side hug, a silent ‘thanks’ for helping him up. She couldn’t help but think that, in less than a year, she wouldn’t get to hug him anymore. She quickly shoved the negative thought from her mind, not wanting to upset herself any further. It had only been a few weeks since Dean had made his deal, but Lily really didn’t know how she was going to handle the upcoming year.  

She gargled the water again, trying desperately to get the taste of throw up out of her mouth. She had brushed her teeth twice, but the strong taste still lingered in the back of her throat. Sighing with defeat, she spit the water onto the ground before heading back into Bobby’s hunter friends’ house.  

Lily entered their dark basement which was lit only with lanterns and candles. It reminded her of some 17th century torture dungeon or something along those lines. It was cluttered with hunting supplies: guns, holy water, maps, and loads of other things that she didn’t even recognize. Bobby was studying the hundreds of maps that covered the walls, tracing the different roads with his fingers, Sam was looking through the objects that laid on their table, while Adam was flipping through the couple’s different lore books. Lily took another sip of her water bottle and noticed Dean sitting in the corner, talking on his phone.

“Jenny, is it?” He asked. His voice sounded flirty and charming and Lily couldn’t help but roll her eyes at him, though she was amused at the same time. “That’s a beautiful name. That’s my sister’s name, actually.” Lily laughed quietly at this blatant lie. She knew he was doing this for the case, but it was still funny. She made a mental note to make fun of him for it later. 

“Honey?” Isaac called to Tamara, looking around the room. “Where’s the Palo Santo?”

“Well, where’d you leave it?” Tamara asked. Her higher pitched british accent heavily contrasted to her husband’s deep American one. 

“I don’t know, Dear, that’s why I’m asking,” Isaac replied. Lily thought that he was probably rolling his eyes at his wife, but she couldn’t see his face as he was facing the other direction.

“Palo Santo?” Sam asked, curiously. He put down whatever hunting object he had picked up back onto the table. 

“It’s holly wood, from Peru,” Tamara supplied with a soft smile at Sam. “It’s toxic to demons like holy water. Keeps the bastards nailed down while you’re exorcising them.” She opened a drawer right in front of Isaac and pulled out a piece of wood, handing it to her husband. 

“Thank you, Dear.” Isaac took the wood from her carefully, pointing the sharper end toward the ceiling. 

“You’d lose your head if it wasn’t for me.” Tamara smiled at him. 

Lily sat down next to Adam on one of the wooden chairs near the bookshelf. Adam was engrossed in a book about demons, reading as if his life depended on it, which it sort of did. Since the Devil’s Gate was opened and all those demons were released, knowing everything you could about demons could save your life, she realized. 

“Watcha readin’?” She asked, leaning over to read the book over his shoulder. She knew it was about demons, but she wanted to know the specifics. Adam didn’t look up from the page, he didn’t even acknowledge his sister, too engrossed in the reading. He was like a mini Sam, Lily thought to herself. “Adam.” She tried getting his attention. “Adam,” She sang, pushing on his arm. 

“Oh, hey Lils.” He finally looked up from his book, seemingly just noticing Lily’s presence. “What’s up?”

“What’s this book say?” She asked, pulling the book across the table towards herself. The drawing on the page was of what looked like a man, but his eyes were completely black. Turning to the writing, she began skimming the page.

“How to defend yourself against demons. Not much more than what we already knew though,” Adam explained. “Holy water burns them, exorcisms send them back to Hell, but nothing on how to actually kill them.” 

“Well, there  _ has  _ to be a way to kill them. Everything dies, right?” She asked, rhetorically. “I mean we could stick with exorcisms, but killing them would be easier.” 

Adam chuckled. “When have you ever done an exorcism?” 

It was true; she had never done an exorcism before. Adam knew that, but she didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of being right. “Oh, you know, here and there,” She lied, and they both knew it, turning her attention back to the dusty old book in front of her while avoiding her brother’s eyes.  

“Name one time,” He spoke, a smile on his lips. 

“April 17th, 2000.” Lily flipped the page of the book, her eyes skimming the passages but not retaining anything. “You weren’t there.” 

He laughed at her. “You performed an exorcism when you were six?” She had just said the first date that had popped into her head, not even paying attention to the year. She blushed a light pink as she realized her mistake. 

“Yep, sorry you missed it,” Lily replied, flipping the page, again. This time a drawing of a Devil’s trap was printed on the page. “I think you had real bad diarrhea that day. It’s a shame, it was a really good exorcism, too.” They were both chuckling at this point. 

“Well, Jenny,” Dean spoke into the phone as he got up from his chair in the corner. “If you look as pretty as you sound, I’d love to have an . . Appletini.” He made a face at them at the word ‘Appletini’ and Lily caught Adam’s eye. They both began to laugh at Dean’s expense. “Yeah, call you.” He hung up the phone, losing his flirtatious smile.

“What the hell is an Appletini?” Adam asked, still chuckling. 

“How the hell should I know?” Dean replied. Lily and Adam chuckled at this. “Anyway, that was the coroner’s tech.” He put his cell phone back into his pocket.

“And?” 

“Get this - that whole family, cause of death? Dehydration and Starvation. There’s no sign of restraint, no violence, no struggle. They just sat down and never got back up,” Dean explained. Lily furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. How the hell could that happen? She wouldn’t say it was impossible as, in their line of work, nothing was impossible, but it was incredibly strange. 

“But there was a fully stocked kitchen just yards away.” 

“Right, what is this? A demon attack?” Sam asked, looking just as confused as everyone else.

“Well, if it is, it ain’t like any I ever saw, and I’ve seen plenty,” Bobby added in.

“So, what do we do then?” Dean asked everyone, looking serious.

“Well, Dean, maybe you can ask your sister Jenny what she thinks happened.” Lily chuckled at her own joke, but no one else did. Dean just rolled his eyes at her, but she could see a slight smile tugging at his lips. 

“Uh,  _ we’re _ not gonna do anything,” Isaac butted in.

“What the hell is that s’posed to mean?” Adam asked, glaring up at Isaac from where he sat. 

“Look, you guys seem nice enough, but this ain’t ‘Scooby Doo’, and we don’t play well with others.” 

Lily raised her eyebrows at this. Seriously? Who did this guy think he was? If they put their minds together they’d finish this hunt a lot quicker. 

“Well, I think we’d cover a lot more ground if we all worked together,” Sam replied, calmly compared to how Lily would’ve handled it. 

“No offense, but we’re not teaming up with the damn fools who let the Devil’s Gate get opened in the first place,” Isaac snapped, his tone harsh and cold. 

“Damn, it’s not like they shot Franz Ferdinand and started World War One or something!” Lily spat back. “And, yes, I did pay attention in history class, thank you very much,” She added, quieter this time, to her brothers and Bobby. 

“They might as well have, considering we’ll be at war with the demons soon,” Isaac sneered at the young girl. 

Adam quickly stood up. “Leave my sister alone, you asshole,” He spat, walking closer to Isaac threateningly. Lily was glad that Adam was defending her, but part of her wanted to prove that she could defend herself. He viewed her as his weak little sister that he had to protect, all three of her brothers did, but she wanted them to see her as something more. As someone who could kick ass and take names all by herself. The problem was that she really wasn’t that good at that just yet, at least not as good as her brothers were, but she was determined to be that person. She was determined to prove herself. 

“Adam, sit back down,” Dean ordered. Adam glared at Isaac once more before slowly sitting down next to Lily, again.  

“Isaac, like you’ve never made a mistake.” Tamara turned to her husband, her tone still calm and light despite the growing tension in the room. 

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Locked my keys in the car, turned my laundry pink. Never brought on the end of the world, though.” 

“This isn’t the end of the world, dude; a couple hundred demons isn’t that big of a deal,” Lily argued, despite the matching looks that Dean and Sam threw at her.

“It isn’t that big of a deal?” Isaac repeated, angrily. “Do you know how many people have been killed because of you people?” His nostrils flared in anger. 

“Alright, everyone calm down.” Dean, always the mediator, stepped in. “Lily, be quiet.” He sent her a warning glare. She knew that look well by now. It had once been their father’s silent way of telling his kids to be quiet, that they were stepping over the line. She wasn’t sure when Dean had started adopting the look. It could’ve been after their father’s death, but Lily had a feeling that Dean was always parenting her like this. When John was gone on hunts, which was more than half the time, he was the one raising her and Sam and Adam. He had always been a parent figure, for longer than she had been alive, and she was guessing that that look came with the job.

“Guys, this isn’t helping. Dean -” Sam spoke quietly, trying to stop the arguing. Lily found that sort of ironic; Sam was usually the one doing the arguing. Arguing with Dad about hunting, arguing with Dad about going to college, arguing with Dean about Dad. He was always arguing with someone and now  _ he _ was the one trying to stop the arguing. Maybe he had matured or maybe it was just because Dad, the number one source of all his arguing, was gone. Lily furrowed her eyebrows at the thought. 

“Look, there are a couple hundred more demons out there now,” Isaac said, his deep voice growing louder again. “We don’t know where they are, when they’ll strike. There ain’t enough hunters in the world to handle something like this. You brought war down on us - on  _ all _ of us.” He finished his speech, throwing an icy glare at all of them. 

Adam opened his mouth to defend them, but Dean sent him that sharp look and he shut it, scowling. 

“Okay, that’s quite enough  _ testosterone _ for now,” Tamara spoke, tugging her husband out of the room, lessening the tension between them all. Lily sighed once they were gone, running a hand through her hair. 

Lily downed the last few sips of her coffee with vigor, trying desperately to stay focused and awake. She hated the taste of coffee; no matter how much sugar or cream she put into it, it still tasted like asshole. She made a mental note to stock up on energy drinks next time they stopped at a gas station. At least those tasted half-decent, even if the strong taste sometimes made her gag. She had accepted a long time ago that there was no other way for her to pull all-nighters. Her body always crashed at around three AM if she were lucky, but sometimes it was as early as midnight. With coffee or an energy drink or, hell, even some pop - anything with caffeine - she was able to stay awake and work.

She turned the page of the large leather-bound book in front of her, but the words all blurred together. Rubbing her eyes wearily, she tried to stay focused. She had to find a way; she had to find Dean a way out of his deal. It was all she could think about.

A shuffle from one of the beds made her still. She didn’t want her brothers to know she was pulling all-nighters, but it was difficult when you were always sharing a room with them. If only they had a house or an apartment or  _ something _ with bedrooms, but that wasn’t the way hunting worked. She hadn’t stayed in the same house for more than two months since she was three years old and had lived with her mom. 

Everything always came back to her mom. If her mom hadn’t died that night she could be living a normal life; she could be going to school every single day and to the _same_ _school_. Lily was always dreaming about what it would all be like. Maybe she would have her first boyfriend already, maybe she would have a big group of friends, or maybe she would be the top of her class. She chuckled at the thought of being good at school. She wasn’t a good student. Maybe it did have something to do with all the moving around she did, but she had a feeling it was just because she wasn’t smart. She had trouble keeping up with the other kids and she had accepted it at this point. She wasn’t as good as the rest of the kids her age. They were smart and they were all going to go somewhere in life. And her? She would be a hunter for as long as she lived, which, considering her family's’ track record, wouldn’t be that long. 

Pulling from her negative thoughts, Lily snuck a glance at the dark motel beds. Sam and Adam were sharing the one on the right while she and Dean were supposed to be sharing the one on the left, Dean laying the closest to the motel door. Sam and Adam were both always refusing to share with Lily as she usually kicked in her sleep. It wasn’t rare for Dean to wake up with bruises forming on his legs, but he put up with it; she wasn’t sure why he did. 

Relieved that none of them had woken, Lily turned back to her research. She had a notebook lying open next to the lore book to take notes, if you could even call them that. Her notes were pretty much just anything and everything about demon deals, hell, and hellhounds quickly scrawled down in messy handwriting - like a child had written it. Some of her words were illegible, making her frustration peak. She couldn’t even take notes correctly, how was she ever going to be able to save her brother?

She slammed her book shut angrily, the noise louder than she had expected it to be. Her eyes widened and she quickly turned to face the two beds at the other side of the room. Sam, Dean, Adam, and Lily were all incredibly light sleepers - a pro (or maybe a con?) of being a hunter - which was extremely annoying in moments like these. She could never really get away with anything. Much to her surprise, none of them stirred. Relieved, Lily turned back to the table and slid the lore book and her notes into her worn bag. 

“Lils?” Someone, their voice deep from sleep, murmured from the beds behind her.

_ Damn it _ , Lily thought. She had thought she was in the clear. She made sure her bag was fully zipped before she turned back around in her seat. 

“Hey,” She whispered, trying to act like she hadn’t been up the whole night researching. 

“What are you doing up?” Adam asked, getting out of the bed and walking towards her. He sat down at the table next to her, wiping the sleep from his eyes. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Lily spoke softly, after a beat of silence. 

“Because of Dean?” 

Lily nodded, glancing towards the beds again to make sure her other two brothers hadn’t woken up. Sam and Dean would be much more concerned with her lack of sleep as they saw her as more of a child than as a friend, unlike Adam did. 

Adam pulled Lily in for a side hug and she buried her head in his chest. Adam knew about the nightmares, which were half the reason why she stayed up night after night, but he didn’t know about her research. She didn’t want him to know, he’d just tell her to try and get some sleep. She knew that he cared about getting Dean out of his deal too, but he wasn’t doing anything and everything he could to do it. Maybe he actually didn’t care, at least not as much as she did. Maybe he had given up hope. Lily felt a pang of guilt for thinking badly about her brother, her best friend, but he just didn’t seem to  _ care.  _ He was acting like everything was fine and that they were all gonna live happily ever after, just like Dean was. Lily knew he would explode soon enough, he and Dean had that in common too, but it was just so aggravating to feel like only she and Sam cared. Sometimes she thought Adam and Dean were too much alike for their own good. They both bottled their emotions inside until they exploded or until they were pressed on the matter for a long time. She and Sam were at least facing the idea that Dean was going to die, and they were both dealing with it. Dean and Adam don’t deal. She saw it with Dad’s death and now she was seeing it all over again. Lily hugged Adam back tightly, wanting him to know that she would always be there for him, even when he said he was fine. 

“Okay so this chick killed this other chick over a pair of  _ shoes _ ?” Lily asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise. Either that woman had been insane or it was a demon. But why would a demon kill someone over a pair of shoes? None of it was making sense. 

“Looks like it,” Dean replied from the driver’s seat of the Impala, glancing at her through his mirror. 

“It must’ve been a demon then, right?” Adam asked, straightening his tie. Adam was posing as an FBI intern for the first time and Lily could see through his calm mask; he was secretly nervous about this. She could tell by the way he chewed on his finger nails every so often or how he kept running a hand through his short hair. 

“Probably, but we’ve gotta go check it out still,” Dean spoke, glancing over at his youngest brother in the passenger seat. “Are you sure you’re ready for this Ads?” 

“Yeah, of course I am. It’s not that hard,” Adam replied, clearly trying hard not to sound nervous. He really wanted to be part of this, Lily could tell, plus he was always talking about how he wanted to help out with hunting more than he did. Lily felt the same, which was why she was slightly jealous of him for getting to be an FBI agent. Lily looked far too young to even pass as an intern, especially since Adam was pushing it as it was. 

“Yeah, Dean, he’ll be perfectly fine. He’s seen  CSI: Miami before,” Lily piped in from the back seat, grinning and trying not to laugh at her own joke. Dean chuckled while Adam turned around to glare at her.

“Ha ha ha,” He spoke, sarcastically. “You’re so funny, Lils.” 

The Impala pulled into a parking spot on the street, Bobby and Sam (in Bobby’s truck) pulled into the spot behind them. 

“Alright, Lils,” Dean said, opening his door. “Stay here and be careful, okay?” He stepped out of the car. “You got your knife?” He asked, ducking his head back in to look at her. 

“Yeah, Dean, I got it.” Lily waved the knife up in the air, dissapointed that she still couldn’t help them. She wished she was older; she’d have no school  _ and _ she’d be old enough to really hunt. Sure she’d have to deal with taxes or whatever (did Sam and Dean even pay taxes? She wasn’t even sure what taxes were exactly. . .), but it was a small price to pay to have freedom and to have her brothers treat her as an equal instead of as a little kid who needed help and protection. 

The four hunters went across the street to the car and the store where the murder had happened, leaving Lily all alone.

Lily wasn’t used to being all alone like this, not while waiting on a hunt. Usually it was her and Adam waiting together. They’d play games like I Spy or Hangman or, when they were younger, they’d play with action figures and toy cars. They had even had a miniature version of the Impala. Sometimes they’d just sit and talk about what they wanted to be when they grew up or what life would be like if they could just stop being hunters. Now Adam was old enough to really be a part of the hunts and Lily was left behind. 

But she wasn’t bitter, of course.

Hours later, long after it had grown dark, Lily found herself in the back of a car waiting for some possible murderer to show his face. This was  _ not _ how she pictured her Saturday night going. Dean and Bobby were in the front seats while she and Adam were in the back, playing Go Fish. Sam had left them a few hours ago and Lily had no idea where he had gone. Lily assumed it was to get more information on the case, but she wasn’t positive. It’s not like her family ever told her anything about what’s going on. 

“What time is it?” Bobby asked. He yawned and rubbed his face wearily. 

Dean checked the watch on his wrist using the streetlight. “Seven past midnight.”

“Got any threes?” Lily asked Adam before taking a sip of her energy drink. She had bought a six-pack of energy drinks earlier that day and now she was glad that she had. Now she didn’t even have researching to distract her from sleeping. There was just waiting around with her brothers and playing Go Fish, neither of which were very lively activities.

“Go fish,” Adam mumbled, sounding tired himself. Lily had refused to give him one of her energy drinks as she needed all of them for the next few days. She knew she was going to have to sleep more sometime or she was going to crash, but she figured that was a problem for her future self.

Lily rolled her eyes, picking a card from the deck in the middle seat between her and Adam. The card was a queen and she added it with her other few cards. Adam was kicking her ass at this; he only had three cards left. She wasn’t sure what would be more embarrassing: winning at Go Fish or losing, as it was such a simple and childish game. Either way she wished that she and Adam had something to bet so they could play poker. Dean had taught them to play poker when they were younger and it was their favorite card game. Probably because the only card games they knew were Poker and Go Fish, and anything could beat Go Fish.

“Got any queens?” 

“Go fish.”

Suddenly there was rapped knocking on the car door. They all jumped, Dean and Lily letting out small shouts in surprise. Sam was knocking on the door, but it was already unlocked anyway. He opened Dean’s door, still laughing at their reactions. 

“That’s not funny,” Dean said as Sam started to clamber into the car. He pushed Dean’s seat forward to get into the back. Dean groaned as she was pushed up against the dashboard. Sam shoved Lily into the middle seat, forcing her to sit on top of the deck of cards she and Adam had been using for their game. She groaned, lifting one cheek off the seat to pull the cards out from under her. 

“You can keep that deck,” Adam muttered, scrunching up his nose as Lily tried to hand the cards back to him. She rolled her eyes, stuffing them into the duffle bag at her feet. She was just sitting on them; Adam was such a germophobe sometimes. 

With Sam and Adam on either side of her, Lily was squished in the middle. It was even worse considering that Sam was 6’4” - a giant in comparison to Lily. 

“So, John Doe’s name is Walter Rosen. He’s from Oak Park, just west of Chicago. Went missing a few weeks ago,” Sam said while Lily tried to shove him over to make more room, but he wouldn’t budge.

“The night the Devil’s Gate opened?” Dean asked.

“Yeah,” Sam nodded.

“So, you think he’s possessed?”

“It’s a good bet. So what, he just walks up to someone, touches them, and they go stark raving psycho?” 

“Those demons that got out of the gate, they’re gonna do all kinds of things we haven’t seen,” Bobby added in. 

“You mean the demons we  _ let _ out?” Sam asked. He clearly felt guilty about it all, like the murders were all their faults. Lily could understand that. In a way, it was their faults.

“Guys,” Dean interrupted, seeing something through the windshield. Lily squinted, looking through the windshield. An ordinary looking man stepped out of his car and began walking to the bar. “Alright, it’s showtime.”

“Can I come?” Lily asked, hopeful. She wanted to help on the bigger stuff, the maybe-dangerous stuff. 

“No,” All four of them said in unison as Dean and Bobby opened the doors. 

“Why not?” She tried not to whine, like a child would, as she wanted to prove she was old and mature enough to help. 

“It’s too dangerous, Lily, now stay here,” Dean ordered, after letting Sam get out and sticking his head back into the car. “You got your knife?” 

Lily’s aggravation grew. “Yes, I have my stupid knife, Dean. Why can’t I at least have a freaking gun?” She just wanted to be a real hunter for once, why wouldn’t Dean let her? It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t a child anymore.

“You’re not old enough, Lils, now be careful and lock the doors, okay?” Dean replied. Lily could see that he was trying not to get angry or annoyed with her. 

“Just let me help for once!” She yelled, moving to exit the car. Dean held the seat in front of her so she couldn’t leave. The car only had two doors, so the people in the backseat had to either crawl to the front or push the front seats forward. 

“Don’t raise your voice at me,” Dean spoke, sharply.

“You’re not my dad, Dean,” She hissed, her eyes narrowed at her eldest brother. “Stop acting like you are.” 

For a second Lily thought that Dean had looked hurt, but his expression went back to stern. He left without a word, following Adam, Bobby, and Sam to the bar. Lily was left alone, again. 

Fighting with Dean was a foreign concept to Lily; usually the two of them got along great. It had always been Sam that she had butted heads with. As soon as Dean had left Lily felt the guilt pour over her, but she was still too angry to care. She just wanted to be a hunter. If she had to be pulled into this life she wanted it to be the whole deal, not just the research half. Researching was the only important part of hunting that Lily was allowed to partake in, besides the other small non dangerous parts like searching the empty houses. 

Lily sighed, letting her head rest back on her seat. Why couldn’t something in her life just go right for once? Everything bad that could happen always did and she just wanted a win; her life was just one loss after another. 

Through the windshield she saw Sam, Dean, Adam, and Bobby all frantically trying to break down the double doors of the bar. Confused, Lily’s eyebrows furrowed. What was going on? Why did the doors lock? She debated getting out and going to help them, but Dean had told her to stay put and she didn’t want to fight with him again. Besides, what could she do to help anyway? If the lock could be picked they would’ve already done it. All she could really do was stand back and watch them try and break the door down. 

Then one of them must’ve had an idea as they all ran back to the car as quickly as they could. They quickly piled in, ignoring Lily’s questions, and Bobby began to drive straight towards the bar. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Lily said, right before the car broke through the bars’ doors. As soon as the car stopped the four hunters jumped out, each brandishing a flask of holy water. Lily quickly found her own flask of holy water out of her bag and jumped out after them, knowing they’d all be too busy to notice or care. 

There were seven demons in the room and, with a jolt of shock, she noticed Isaac from the day before laying on the ground in a puddle of blood and some green liquid. It didn’t take someone at the top of their class to figure out he was dead. Despite only knowing him for a day and arguing with him, Lily was still shocked and upset about his death. Knowing she had no time to dwell on it, she opened her flask of holy water and began to fling some at the demons. The holy water burned their skin, holding them back from attacking. Sam grabbed Tamara, who was hysterical over her husband’s death, and pushed her into the car, following in after her. Lily and Adam followed the two of them into the back seat, Lily being forced to sit on Adam’s lap as there weren’t enough seats. 

“Dean, come on!” Sam yelled out the window while Tamara tried to fight her way back outside to save her husband. She wouldn’t accept the fact that he was gone. Bobby got into the driver’s seat, but Dean was still outside the car with the demons. Lily saw him go behind the car and, looking through the car’s back window, she saw him open up the trunk. Seconds later he shut it and the demon he had been fighting was gone; he had kidnapped the demon. Dean quickly got into the car, screaming at Bobby to drive. The tires screeched loudly as the group fled from the bar. 

Adrenaline was still pumping through her as they drove. Everyone was trying to calm down, except for Tamara who continued to scream and cry for her husband. It was horrible to hear the cries of someone so upset and in such pain and Lily really wished she would stop, no matter how insensitive that sounded. Lily finally got her breathing back to normal and, feeling as if she was hurting Adam, she slid onto the floor of the car, squishing between the front seat and Adam’s legs. She knew her brothers were angry at her for getting out of the car, but no one said anything at the moment. The only person talking was Sam, trying to calm Tamara down. It wasn’t working and Lily felt so bad for the woman. 

“And I say we’re going back!” Tamara yelled. The group were all back in Tamara’s house, trying to figure out what their next move was. Everyone was shouting over one another and tensions were running high. 

“Hold on a second,” Sam spoke, trying to be reasonable.

“I left my husband bloody on the floor!” She screamed back at him.

“It’s too dangerous to go back,” Adam added in, his voice rising in volume as well. Even Lily knew it would be a suicide mission if they went back. None of them knew how to kill a demon, only how to exorcise them, and until they did they couldn’t fight big groups of them. 

“Fine,” Tamara spat. “Then you all stay, but I’m heading back to that bar.” She turned to walk out. 

“I’m going with her,” Dean said, walking with her towards the door. 

Lily’s jaw dropped. How could her brother be so damned stupid? How could he just give himself up like that? She couldn’t believe him.

“It’s suicide, Dean!” Sam yelled.

“So, what?” Dean spat. “I’m dead already.”

“Shut up, Dean, you’ve still got time,” Lily yelled. “We can find a way to save you!” She did truly believe that they could find a way, but her faith was decreasing with each passing day and with each lore book that couldn’t help her. 

Dean turned back around, glaring at his little sister. “How are you gonna save me, huh? If you break the deal Sam dies!” He yelled at her. His jaw was set, his fists clenched, and his breathing was heavier than usual. It was only on the very rare occasion that Lily was on the receiving end of this Dean, and it scared the hell out of her. She took a step back, trying not to let her fear be seen on her face. 

“We can find a way without it; I know we can,” She said, softly. “Don’t go, Dean.” 

“How are you gonna kill ‘em, anyway?” Sam asked, angrily. “Can’t shoot ‘em, you can’t stab ‘em, and they’re not just gonna wait in line to get exorcised!” He yelled. 

“I DON’T CARE!” Tamara screamed, on the verge of hysterical. 

“We don’t even know how many of them there are!” Adam yelled, his fist clenched at his sides as well. 

Bobby, who had been completely silent up until this point, stepped forward. “Yes, we do.” The rest of the group furrowed their eyebrows in confusion, growing silent. “There’s seven. Do you have any idea who we’re up against?” He asked, venom in his tone. Lily hadn’t seen Bobby like this in a long time - not since her childhood. Not since he got pissed off at their dad for his parenting techniques. 

“No, who?” Dean asked.

“The Seven Deadly Sins, live and in the flesh!” Bobby exclaimed.

“No way, they’re real?” Lily asked, shocked. She had thought they were just a myth, like angels or unicorns. 

Bobby thrusted a book into Lily’s hands. 

“What’s this?” She asked, flipping it open to a random page.

“ Binsfield’s Classification of Demons ,” Bobby spoke as Lily flipped through the pages. She could feel Sam and Adam looking at the book over her shoulders. “In 1589, Binsfield I.D’d the Seven Deadly Sins - not just as human vices but as actual devils,” Bobby explained to the group. 

“The family - they were touched by sloth,” Sam realized, fitting the pieces into the puzzle. “And the shopper, -”

“That was Envy’s doing - the customer we got in the next room,” Bobby cut him off. “I couldn’t suss it out at first until Isaac. He was touched with an awful gluttony,” He said to Tamara. 

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if they’re the Three Stooges or the Four tops!” She sneered. Lily and Adam furrowed their eyebrows at one another, both thinking the same thing: who were the Four Tops? Lily shrugged at her brother. “I’m gonna slaughter every last one of them!” Tamara’s teeth clenched with anger. Lily had seen this before; when Jess had died Sam had been the same way, angry and seeking revenge. Lily knew it wasn’t healthy and that it was gonna end up with Tamara in deep trouble, or worse, with her dead. 

Bobby stepped closer to Tamara, intimidately, their faces close together. “We already did it  _ your _ way,” He hissed. “You burst in their half-cocked and look what happened! These demons haven’t been topside in half a Millennium! We’re talking Medieval, dark ages! We’ve never faced anything close to this! So we are gonna take a breath . . . AND FIGURE OUT WHAT OUR NEXT MOVE IS!” Bobby was full-on screaming and Lily’s eyes widened in shock and, not that she’d admit it, a little bit of fear. Her family was scary when they wanted to be. Tamara and Bobby were silent, both staring each other in the eyes. Tamara was angry and hysterical, she’d be crazy if she wasn’t, and she wasn’t thinking clearly. “I am sorry for your loss,” Bobby added, softly this time. He stepped away from her and she quickly fled the room, silence taking her place. 

Without saying a word the rest of them followed her down to the basement where the demon was tied up, underneath a painted Devil’s Trap on the ceiling. 

“So, you know who I am?” The demon laughed, maniacally. The guy he was possessing had brown hair with a receding hairline and a smirk that seemed to be painted on as it never budged. 

“We do,” Bobby replied. “And we’re not impressed.”

“Why are you here?” Sam asked, as they filed into the room. Lily and Adam stood near the wall opposite the demon, while Sam, Bobby, Tamara, and Dean all stood closer. “What are you after?”

The demon, Envy, Lily remembered, didn’t reply. It just stayed silent, staring up at them with that smirk on its face.

“He asked you a question,” Dean said. “What do you want?”

The demon laughed again, humorlessly. Dean opened a flask of holy water and, with a flick of his wrist, splashed it onto the demon. The demon screamed in pain, his skin sizzling and burning where the holy water had hit. 

“We already have . . . what we want,” It said, still grunting in pain. 

“What’s that?” Dean asked, his eyebrows raised. 

“We’re out,” It replied, grinning. “We’re free. Thanks to you my kind are everywhere. I am legion for we are many.” It chuckled, again. “So, me, I’m just celebrating; having a little fun.”

Lily raised her eyebrows. “Fun? Killing people is fun?” She snapped at it, anger pulsing through her.

The demon laughed again and Lily was getting real sick of it. “You have no idea, little girl,” It said to her, cockiness rolling off its tongue. She rolled her eyes at the jab at her, but said nothing. “See, some people crochet, others golf, but me? I like to see people’s insides . . . on their outside.” Lily glared at it; how could something be so evil? It looked like a human, it talked like a human, but it was a monster.  A disgusting, murderous monster. 

“I’m gonna put you down like a dog,” Tamara spoke, stepping closer to it. 

“Please,” It laughed again and Lily was so close to punching it in its face. “You really think you’re better than me?” It grinned at them. “Which of you can cast the first stone, huh? What about you, Dean? You’re practically a walking billboard of gluttony and lust.” 

Lily couldn’t help but agree with it, though she would never let it have that satisfaction of knowing. Gluttony and lust weren’t the only aspects of Dean’s personality, of course, they were just a big part of him. 

“And Lily,” It turned to her. She didn’t know what it was going to say to describe her. Pretty much all the seven sins, besides lust, could apply to her. “So much envy and anger within you; it’s quite sad. You’re jealous of everyone with a mom, as you lost yours so young, and jealous of the kids at school for living normal lives.” Lily’s eyes widened; how did it know all of that about her? Could it read her thoughts or see her memories? That was private stuff about her, stuff that she hadn’t even told  _ Adam _ . 

“And Tamara,” It faced Tamara now. “All that wrath; it’s the reason you and Isaac became hunters in the first place, isn’t it? It’s so much easier to drink in the rage than to face what really happened all those years ago.”

Tamara suddenly snapped, punching the demon in the face twice before Bobby and Dean could restrain her. Lily was glad Tamara had done it, that  _ somebody _ had done it, because if Tamara hadn’t done it Lily was sure that she herself might have. 

“My point exactly,” The demon said, laughing, after recovering from the punches. “And you call  _ us _ sins. We’re not sins, man, we are natural human instinct and you can repress us all you want, but the truth is you are just animals. Horny, greedy, hungry, violent animals. And you know what? You’ll be slaughtered like animals, too.” 

A distant noise came from outside the house and the demon smiled. 

“The others - ” It grinned. “They’re coming for me.”

Dean smiled fakely. “Maybe.” He leaned in closer to the demon’s face. “But they’re not gonna find you, ‘cause you’ll be in Hell.” The arrogant smile finally fell from the demon’s face and Lily couldn’t help but smirk. The demon was gonna get what it deserved and she couldn’t help but be happy about it. “Someone send this clown packing.”

“My pleasure,” Tamara smirked, and she began to read an exorcism out of a book she had grabbed off the table. Lily sent a fake smile and a wave to the demon before she followed her brothers and Bobby out of the basement, the sounds of the exorcism reverberating up after them. 

“I don’t think we’re gonna have to worry about hunting them,” Bobby talked over the screams of the demon downstairs. 

“What do you mean?” Adam asked, confused.

“I think this Joker’s maybe right; they’re gonna be hunting  _ us _ and they’re not gonna quit easy,” Bobby explained. 

There were six demons chasing after them, Lily realized, one for each hunter. She knew this was her chance to fight for once, something she had been wanting to do more for forever, but now that it was maybe happening she was scared. What if she couldn’t do it? What if she messed it up, just like she had messed up her first hunt? Dad was right, she was a disappointment, always messing things up. Why would this time be any different?

“Why don’t you guys take Tamara and Lily and run for the hills?” Dean suggested, as if Lily wasn’t standing right there with them. “I’ll stick back, slow them down, buy you a little time.” 

“Are you kidding?” Adam snapped. “Dean, six demons against one hunter is a suicide mission, what’s wrong with you?” 

“Yeah, Adam, there’s six of them. We’re outmanned, we’re outgunned, there’s no way we can win this.” 

“What do you mean we’re outmanned?” Lily asked, though she already knew the answer. He wasn’t gonna let her fight. “There’s six of them and six of us.”

“Like hell am I letting you fight a demon by yourself,” Dean snapped at her. “You’d get yourself killed.” 

That stung; it was like she was dissapointing their dad all over again, except it worse as she had always admired and respected Dean more than their dad. “Why don’t you believe in me, Dean?” 

“Because you’re thirteen years old, Lily! You can’t fight a freakin’ demon alone! You couldn’t even do a simple salt and burn without messing it up!” He yelled at her. 

“Lils, he’s right, you can’t fight a demon,” Sam added in, softer than Dean had. “You’re not experienced enough.” 

Lily ignored him. “Go to Hell, Dean,” She sneered at him. She shoved past her brothers and went into the living room, trying to fight back the tears that had welled up in her eyes. She knew better than to leave the house; she wasn’t completely stupid or helpless, despite what others thought. She felt someone sink down next to her and she didn’t even have to look up to know who it was. Adam was always there for her, of course he would be the one to comfort her now. Plus, Lily could smell his strong cologne as he always applied ten times as much as he really needed, defending himself by saying it’s for the ladies he could meet that day. That smell always made her feel safe and comforted. Adam didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. He just pulled her into one of his hugs, holding her close to his chest and letting her let her walls down.

She felt guilty for saying that to Dean. He was already going to Hell and now his little sister was basically telling him to go, that she wanted him to die, that she didn’t care about him. None of that was true; it was just something she had said in the heat of the moment.  

Suddenly every candle in the room went out, leaving them in total darkness. Lily lifted her head off of Adam’s chest, noticing the tear marks she had left in his shirt. She’d apologized for it later, she thought to herself. She knew the demons were here and, with one look at Adam, she knew she was right. This was really happening. 

“Okay, Lils,” Sam said as he approached her and Adam. “Here’s the plan; you take a knife, holy water, salt, and a gun and you hide. You stay away from all the fighting no matter what happens, okay?” 

“You’re kidding me, right?” She asked, glaring at her brother. “You don’t stand a chance and you want me to  _ hide _ and let you guys . . .” She whispered, trailing off at the end. She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t even  _ think _ about it. There was no way that that could really happen. But she knew it was most likely what was going to go down; they were most likely going to be defeated. They just couldn’t win this one this time. 

“Lils, you’ve gotta hide. We’re not gonna let you get hurt,” Adam added in from next to her.

“You guys are so stupid. They’ll find me! They’ll be done with you guys and they’ll find me! I’m gonna die either way!” She was getting hysterical now. Despite how crappy her life was, she didn’t want to die. Not today, at least. And not without her brothers by her side. She was accepting defeat. They didn’t know how to kill demons, and exorcisms took too long. How could they possibly win this?

Sam sighed, catching Adam’s eyes. There seemed to be some unspoken communication or agreement between them as Sam nodded and turned back to Lily. “You’re not fighting, Lily. If they can’t find you then they can’t kill you.” 

Lily’s jaw clenched with anger. She couldn’t just sit around and let everyone she loves be killed; she had to fight, even if they tried to stop her. 

They had forced her to sit in a closet while they fought. Because no demon could figure out that she was there of course, she thought to herself sarcastically. She held a shotgun in one hand and a flask of holy water in another, on the floor next to her laid her knife and a second flask, and the floor in front of the door was covered in a layer of salt. 

Everything was quiet at first; no sounds of fighting or gunshots or exorcisms, just silence. It was agonizing just having to  _ wait _ . Waiting to see if her family survived or not. Waiting to see if she was going to be killed next; there was no way she could survive if they couldn’t. 

Finally, after straining to hear something, she faintly heard someone yelling. She couldn’t make out who it was or what they were saying, but she could tell it was a man. A shiver ran through her as she realized they were here. This night could end up changing her whole life - or maybe even ending it. Despite trying to be this brave, experienced hunter, Lily was terrified. She always wore this brave facade but it was crumbling. She wanted to be back in Adam’s arms: safe and comforted and loved. Her breathing quickened its pace and she tried to stay as still as quiet as she could - just in case. 

She jumped as she heard something crashing, followed by multiple pairs of feet running. Not knowing what was happening was killing her and she just wanted it all to stop. She wanted to go home - wherever that was. She heard screaming and punches being thrown and she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t let her family die. 

Standing shakily to her feet, Lily reached for the doorknob of the closet. She hesitated. Going out there could get her killed, which was an absolutely terrifying thought, but staying where she was could get her entire family killed instead. She let out a sob, not knowing what to do. Why couldn’t she be brave like her brothers and Bobby and Tamara? Why was she hesitating? She took a deep, shaky breath and wiped a stray tear off her cheek. She had to do this. After picking up her knife and holy water, she turned the knob and slowly stepped out of the closet. 

Nobody was in the hallway she was in, but she was still on edge. A demon could pop out at her at any moment. She walked down the hall, following the sounds of the fighting. There were six demons and five other hunters, that meant one of them could be fighting two and would was likely to lose. She tried not to think about it, but those thoughts kept coming back to her. 

She turned the corner and gasped quietly. There was a demon coming straight towards her. It was possessing a taller girl, her blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail. With her heart thumping faster and faster in her chest and her legs shaking, Lily gripped the knife and holy water in her hands tightly. The demon came within arms distance and Lily striked, splashing holy water on it and kicking it backwards. The demon growled at her, its pitch black eyes glaring icily at the young girl. It pounced, shoving her into a wall without even touching her. The impact made her holy water and knife drop from her hands. With a gasp, Lily tried to escape, but could only squirm against the wall. She was trapped.

“Aw, aren’t you a cute little thing?” The demon mocked, pinching one of Lily’s cheeks. “I should just kill you right here,” It sneered, coming closer to her and wrapping her hand around her throat. Lily struggled to breathe. She could feel the lack of oxygen making her lightheaded and, right before she thought she was going to pass out, the demon stopped. “But maybe I could use you instead.” It smirked down at her while Lily gasped for breaths. What did it mean by that? Use her how? Fear bubbled in her stomach but, before she could react, the demon was leaving its body. The black smoke exited from the woman’s body and she fell to the ground, unconscious. Lily looked up and, within seconds, the black smoke was entering  _ her. _

She suddenly had no control over her own body; the demon had taken over. It smirked - she could feel her own lips forming a smirk, but she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t do anything. Lily was helpless, under the control of someone else entirely. 

“Wow, there’s  _ lots _ of anger in here,” The demon spoke, but it was with Lily’s voice. It was the strangest thing Lily had ever experienced; to an outsider, it just looked like Lily was talking to herself. She tried to fight against the demon, mentally, but she couldn’t force it out. “You’re angry that your brother is going to die, angry that your parents are both dead and that you never got a chance to truly know your mother, angry that you can’t be a normal kid, angry at your dad for never being there for you or your brothers, angry at your brother for never letting you hunt, and angry at the world for having such evil in it.” The demon was right. All of those things were true, whether or not Lily would admit them. The demon had access to all of Lily’s thoughts, feelings, and memories. It knew every single thing there was to know about her. How the hell was she gonna fix this? “Let’s go have some fun, kid,” The demon said to her, a smirk on her lips again.

The demon made its way downstairs, after picking up Lily’s knife, to where all the fighting was happening. The first two people it (or was it she? They?) saw was Tamara and Bobby. What if it killed Bobby? Lily knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself is she killed Bobby. The demon smirked at them, Bobby wiping sweat off his brow. He had just exorcised one of the demons with Tamara’s help. 

“Lily? What the hell are you doin’ down here? It ain’t safe!” Bobby reprimanded, angrily. 

“Let me help you with him,” The demon spoke, moving to help them drag the guy’s body somewhere. It was only pretending, and Lily couldn’t help but scream at Bobby and Tamara to run, but they couldn’t hear her. They didn’t even know that it wasn’t really her in there. The demon bent down as if she were going to help lift the guy off the ground, when she pulled the knife out of Lily’s back pocket. She quickly whipped around and Lily felt herself stab Tamara in the stomach, but she couldn’t stop it. The demon smirked up at Tamara, twisting the knife in her and flashing her black eyes. Once the demon pulled the knife out Tamara dropped to the ground, attempting to put pressure onto her wound, but the life was quickly fading from her eyes. She wouldn’t make it.

The demon turned to Bobby, whose eyes had widened, and took a step towards him. “Now, it’s your turn.” The demon took a swing at Bobby but he caught Lily’s arm. Lily could tell that he was trying not to hurt her body, but he was finding it difficult to fight without injuring. The demon kneed him in the stomach and he doubled over, leaving him vulnerable. It elbowed Bobby in the back and he fell to the ground, where it started kicking him over and over again. 

“Lils, what the hell?” She heard Sam’s voice from the doorway. It hadn’t clicked to him that she was possessed.

The demon turned to Sam, flashing its black eyes at him. “Hey, Sammy-Boy.” Sam’s eyes widened, but he quickly recovered from the shock. He moved quickly and attempted to grab Lily’s arm, but the demon punched him in the face before he could deflect it. He shoved the demon back and it tripped over Bobby, who still lyed on the floor, and it fell backwards, smacking Lily’s head onto the concrete. Lily could feel blood seeping from the back of her head and she hoped that Sam would do this exorcism quickly. Thankfully, Sam wasted no time in picking the demon up and tossing it under the devil’s trap. The demon landed roughly on the floor, making no effort to stand up as Lily’s head was pounding in pain. 

Sam must’ve helped Bobby up as he and Sam were both standing in front of her, Sam holding the lore book with the exorcism printed in it. He began to read the latin words that covered the page. The demon began to scream, with Lily’s voice, as the exorcism took effect. The screams were loud and high-pitched, piercing her ears with their volume. She didn’t even know that she could scream like that. It wasn’t hurting Lily, much to her relief, only the demon as it was sent back to Hell. 

Once the demon was exorcised and back in Hell Lily was exhausted. She sighed, thankful to have her body back as her own. Not being in control of her own body had been horrible and she never wanted to experience that ever again. Sam rushed to her side, helping her stand to her feet, apologizing for hurting her. As soon as she was on her two feet again she could feel the tears sliding down her cheeks; she had  _ killed _ someone. She had killed an innocent woman. Sure, it hadn’t really been her, but it was her body that had done it. It had been her body and her knife; she was fully responsible and that realization hit her hard. Beginning to sob, Lily just wanted it all to end. How could she do this? She ended another human being’s life. Someone innocent would never laugh or smile ever again because of  _ her _ . Someone innocent would never live again because of her. It was all her fault. 

Lily broke down, her sobs shaking her whole body. She felt Sam’s arms wrap around her and she let him comfort her, resting her head on his chest. It wasn’t the same as Adam, but Sam was still her brother and it was nice to be held by him. Her sobs were making the pounding in her head even worse. Sam rubbed small circles into her back, murmuring words of comfort into her ear. 

Hours later, once the sun had come up and Lily’s head was wrapped in a gauze, the boys stood outside in front of the grave they had dug. Well, the grave Sam, Dean, Bobby, and Adam had dug. Lily had been taking a nap as she hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours and her head was still pounding. She let her brothers and Bobby dig the grave, despite one of those deaths being on her hands. She felt guilty for not helping, but she had been so exhausted and sleep had come to her easily for the first time in a few weeks. 

Five bodies had been placed into the large grave; three of which were killed by some unknown girl that had saved Sam, the fourth killed by the demons, and the fifth killed by Lily. It was still so surreal that she had killed someone innocent. The guilt had already started to eat at her, but there wasn’t anything she could do to make it better. Sam salted the bodies while Dean poured gasoline over them. Adam waited next his brothers with the matchbox, ready to burn the bodies. Lily was sitting on the ground a little ways behind them, ashamed and upset that she had messed up so badly. Dean was right; she had messed it up. 

Lily zoned out her brothers’ and Bobby’s conversation. She just couldn’t stop thinking about how she had stabbed Tamara. She rested her forehead on her knees and took several deep breaths, trying not to cry again. Everything had just gone to shit recently and she didn’t know what to do. She looked up as Adam lit the match and threw it onto the dead bodies. It all seemed so final. Tamara would never walk or talk or smile or laugh or live ever again and it was all on her. She had never felt so guilty before. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: No, I'm not dead! I started my junior year of high school (where I'm in three clubs including the school newspaper which is time consuming), I've been applying to jobs, and I took the PSAT. So, I apologize for taking so long, but I do have a life outside of here lmao. I wish I had more time to write though. Anyway, new chapter! You really get to see a different side of Lily in this one (as she is almost two years older than she was last chapter) and I really enjoyed writing her conflicting emotions and everything. She's still childish, though, as she is still a child (despite what she likes to think). Also this chapter has almost 10,000 more words than last chapter did which is crazy, but last chapter was just the little prologue thing. 
> 
> I created a tumblr for Lily a few months back where I'll be posting things that remind me of Lily or anything about Lily really. Come follow it at brilliantlily. tumblr. com. There are spoilers for future chapters and ideas on there though! So, if you don't want to know spoilers it's not a spoiler-free blog.


	3. The Kids Aren't Alright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The siblings head to Cicero, Indiana so Dean can see his old flame Lisa.

**CHAPTER TWO: THE KIDS AREN’T ALRIGHT**

Tick. 

Tock. 

Tick.

Tock. 

It was as if the clock were mocking her. She was stuck at school for another three hours, but it was the last place she wanted to be. She wanted to go back to the motel or go to the library so that she could do more research. Lily knew she was getting nowhere, but there had to be a way to get her brother out of this mess. There  _ had  _ to be - and she wasn’t about to give up on him. He couldn’t die. 

Tick. 

Tock.

Tick. 

Tock. 

Lily was sure that the clock was moving  _ backwards _ . This class was taking forever. This day was taking forever. Dean had less than a year to live, what was going to school gonna do to help him? Lily once again found herself longing to be sixteen, longing to be old enough to drop out, longing to be old enough to take control of her own life for once. 

Sighing, Lily took her eyes off the clock for the first time in ten minutes, running her fingers through her hair. She needed a haircut, she thought to herself offhandedly. Her brown hair cascaded down to her lower back, and it was really getting in the way when she practiced hand-to-hand fighting. Plus, longer hair is easier to pull and use against her - at least that’s what her dad had always told her. Subconsciously licking her lips, she decided to ask Dean to cut it for her later. Dean usually did a pretty decent job at cutting her hair, not that her hair really mattered to her that much. If he messed it up it wasn’t a big deal to the young girl; she didn’t care much about her looks due to the life that they lead. They had never had the money to be able to afford nice clothes or anything but drugstore makeup, and growing up in a family of all boys hadn’t made her a ‘girly girl’ either.

“Liliana,” She heard a woman’s voice call out. The woman’s voice was stern, and Lily looked up to see her newest Biology teacher (she hadn’t bothered to learn her name - they’d be leaving again soon enough, Lily was sure of it) glaring at her, her arms crossed across her chest. The use of her full name had shocked Lily from her thoughts. “Pay attention,” The teacher scolded. From her seat in the back corner of the room, Lily could see the rest of the students in her class staring at her. She shifted in her seat, uncomfortably. She wasn’t a big fan of being the center of attention, probably because it was usually bad attention. 

“Sorry,” Lily faked an apology, leaning back farther in her chair. In truth, she really couldn’t care less about this teacher or her dumb class. She just wanted to escape from this place. She had bigger and more important things to worry about than whatever they were learning about in this damn class. She wasn’t even sure  _ what _ exactly they were learning about; she never payed attention in class anymore. Not since Sam had died. Not since Dean had sold his soul. And especially not since she had killed Tamara. 

Her attempts to forget about what had happened were failing; it seemed like she couldn’t keep her mind off of it for more than a few minutes at a time. Every time she thought about it she would get a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had been so stupid, trying to save the day. They hadn’t needed her help, and she had just made things worse. How could she be so stupid? She had made such a stupid choice and it had caused Tamara her life. Lily wasn’t sure if she could ever forgive herself for it. 

The bell rang, pulling Lily from her thoughts again. She gathered her folder into her arms and began to walk towards the door as quickly as possible. She only had five minutes of peace before her next class. As she walked toward the direction of her locker, at least she thought it was where her locker was, a girl began to walk with her. 

“Hey, you’re Liliana, right?” The girl asked, giving Lily a friendly-looking smile. She was taller than Lily, but that wasn’t hard to achieve, her dark hair only reached to her shoulders in tight curls, and Lily noticed that her brown eyes had darkened bags beneath them. Her clothes seemed to be nicer than Lily’s were, newer and less worn out, but Lily could still tell that they were hand-me-downs. The jeans had rips in odd places, the colors of her shirt were faded and aged, and her shoes were tattered and slightly ripped on the sides. They were less worn out than some of Lily’s own clothing, which had been passed down through all of her brothers. Although Lily was sure that she and this girl had a lot of differences, especially with their lifestyles, they did have a few things in common, too. Maybe she could be friends with this girl? For a little while, at least. 

“Um, yeah, but call me Lily,” Lily replied, reaching into her jeans’ pocket and pulling out the small scrap of paper that had her locker number and combination scrawled down on it.  _ 1124. _ Scanning the lockers in front of her, she searched for hers.

She didn’t exactly trust this girl, she didn’t really trust anyone but her brothers and Bobby, but this girl wasn’t exactly threatening. Although she was taller than Lily was, Lily knew that she could still beat her in a fight. If the girl ended up being a monster or a demon or something, Lily knew that she could probably handle it. She just hoped that that wasn’t the case. She didn’t want to get into another fight at school and be known as the scary girl who could kick anyone’s ass. Although that reputation could be useful, she just wanted to be normal and to have friends. Yes, she liked to hunt, but she wanted to be as normal as possible besides that. 

“I’m Margo,” The girl introduced herself as they walked through the brightly lit hallway, weaving in and out of the other students. Lily found her locker and read the combination off of the little piece of paper: 5-35-22. Seconds later the locker was opened and Lily stood there, not really needing anything out of it. She had just wanted to waste some time before class. “Listen, some guys and I are gonna cut class this period,” Margo spoke, lowering her voice so others wouldn’t overhear her, Lily guessed. “You wanna come?” 

Lily furrowed her eyebrows, looking up at the girl - Margo, she reminded herself. “Why do you want me to come?” She asked. “You don’t even know me.” Lily tried not to be too suspicious, but it was drilled into her to not trust anyone too quickly. Anyone could be a demon or a werewolf or any other kind of monster that they fought. She did want friends - she was a teenaged girl after all - and this girl did seem like the type of girl she could maybe see herself being friends with, but she couldn’t trust just anyone. 

“You seem cool,” Margo replied, matter-of-factly. “And I think everyone can tell that this is the last freakin’ place that you wanna be.” 

Lily pretended to think it over, but she had already made her decision. Stay in school or leave school? It was no contest, even if she didn’t fully trust the girl she was leaving with. She had a butterfly knife with her and her fighting skills; there was no reason that she shouldn’t go.

Well, besides the fact that Sam would murder her if he ever found out.

School was important to Sam - it always had been. It was important to him that Adam and Lily go to school and get decent grades. Adam didn’t really have a problem with school, he actually liked to go sometimes, but Lily had started to hate it in the past few months. It was just so unnecessary for them. They would never go to college; Sam was proof enough of that. They would never have careers. They would never use their diplomas. Their whole lives would be dedicated to hunting, just like their brothers’ are, and just like their fathers’ was. 

It was relieving to be out of the stuffy school, especially considering it always seemed to smell strongly of boy’s body spray. The wind whipped through her hair, the fresh air filled her lungs, and Lily found herself smiling for the first time in awhile; she felt sort of free. It was in that moment that she knew she wasn’t making a mistake in wanting to drop out. She wanted to be free.

Margo led her to the football stadium. There were two sets of bleachers on opposite sides of the fields, one set closer to them than the other. An orange-red track ran along the outskirts of the field, and a small building stood off to the right of it all, probably a concession stand during the games. Confused, Lily followed Margo, mentally preparing herself for a fight if it came down to that. Taking hold of her hand, Margo pulled Lily underneath the closer set of bleachers. Margo’s actions surprised Lily, but she didn’t pull away. She just let the taller girl lead them. Margo’s touch felt weird; it wasn’t a bad kind of weird, but it was strange. Why did her touch make her feel weird? Lily’s defences went back up; maybe she  _ was _ a shapeshifter or a demon or something? Lily sighed, it wasn’t like she could test her. She’d just have to take her chances.

Suddenly they were no longer alone.

There were a few other people there, maybe five or six, and they were sitting together in a group. Two of the kids, they were older than Lily and Margo - Sophomores maybe, were making out. The girl was sitting on top of the guy’s lap and they were kissing as if they had to do so to survive. Lily crinkled her nose in disgust; were they ever going to stop and breathe? The others were passing around a dark red bottle and taking turns sipping from it. Lily couldn’t tell what it was, but she knew right away that it was some kind of alcohol. She had only been to this school a week and she had found the group of kids that were dumb enough to drink on school grounds. Though, the more that she thought about it, a drink didn’t sound too bad right now. Dean always used alcohol to deal with everything, maybe it could help her too? Maybe it would help her forget about everything. About Dean. About Tamara. Maybe it would make her feel something except grief or anger for once. Maybe it would help her feel more free.

Lily instantly made her decision.

It turned out that the drink they had been drinking was whiskey, and Lily, being thirteen and such a lightweight, was already getting drunk from a couple of gulps. Margo sat beside her, giggling at a joke another kid had just made. Her laugh was high-pitched and chipmunk sounding, but it wasn’t a bad sound. It was kind of cute, actually. The bottle was passed to Lily and she quickly took another sip, wanting to feel even happier than she already did.

This wasn’t the first time she had had a drink before, but it  _ was  _ the first time she was drinking without permission. Dean had always let her have some of his beer, but not too much of it. Sam, however, would never let her drink, but Dean would always give her a sip or two when their brother wasn’t looking. Sam claimed she was way too young, but she was almost fourteen for crying out loud. Adam was allowed to drink, but Sam wasn’t thrilled about letting him. He had to be the biggest hypocrite in the world, though, because Lily was almost positive that Sam had drank before he had turned twenty-one.

When it came closer to the end of the school day, Lily headed back inside the school to get her backpack. She should have gotten it before she had gone with Margo, but she hadn’t known that they were going to get drunk and not go back inside. She would’ve left with the group, too, but she had to walk back to the motel with Adam, and he would be pissed if she left without him. After grabbing her bookbag, Lily went to the bathroom. She tossed her bag to the floor and turned on the faucet of one of the sinks, running her hands beneath the frigid water. The coldness of the water felt refreshing against her warm skin. She splashed her face a few times, trying to calm down and get as sober as possible before she had to walk back with Adam. She cupped some of the water in her hands and brought it to her lips, slurping it quickly. She knew that drinking water would sober her up, at least a little. Or at least she thought it would; she wasn’t an expert on drinking. She repeated the process, finishing up just as the final bell rang. She quickly left the bathroom, her black leather backpack hanging off of one shoulder. 

“I hate walkin’,” Lily grumbled beneath her breath. She was trying to act as sober as possible. She had been right; the water had helped her sober up a bit, but she was still pretty tipsy. Maybe drunk? She wasn’t sure. 

“Sorry, I don’t have a car,” Adam said, hoisting his own backpack higher up on his shoulder. One of the straps of Adam’s backpack had fallen off, forcing him to have to carry his bag on only one shoulder. Her brothers had meant to get him a new one, but they were always forgetting. Though Adam was a Senior; he didn’t have much more time in high school anyway. Why bother buying him a new bag? 

“Oh, god, I am never gettin’ in the car with you drivin’ ever again.” Lily chuckled, thinking about Adam’s first attempt at driving when he had turned sixteen last year. The image of him swerving on the road still made her laugh. Almost as much as hearing Dean’s swears did.

“Lils, I’m  _ not _ a bad driver!” He exclaimed, feigning anger.

“Ha! You almost drove off the road!” She exclaimed, giggling. “Dean was  _ this _ close to havin’ a heart attack.” She held her fingers together, only a few inches apart, to show just how close Dean was to losing it.

“Okay, so maybe I’m not the  _ best _ driver around, but I’m not bad!” He defended himself, chuckling at the memory of his first driving attempt. Lily knew that both of them were picturing Dean’s screams to get back ‘on the damn road’. Dean had never let Adam drive the Impala ever again, even though Adam did get his driver’s license a few months back.

Lily continued giggling long after Adam had stopped laughing, causing him to look at her suspiciously.  _ Crap _ . He knew that something was up with her. She tried to concentrate on walking instead, but her feet just wouldn’t do what her brain was telling them to. 

“Lils, you alright?” Adam asked, concerned. 

“Yeah, ‘course,” Lily mumbled. “ ‘M fine.” And, as soon as she finished her sentence, she tripped over her own foot and stumbled, almost falling face-first onto the sidewalk beneath them. 

“Lils, what the hell?” Adam asked, grabbing onto her shoulders to steady her. “What’s wrong with - ?” He stopped talking and his expression darkened. He had figured it out.  _ How _ had he figured it out? Maybe the two siblings spent  _ too much _ time together. “Are you - are you  _ drunk _ ?” He asked. Lily could hear the anger seeping into his tone.  _ Crap. _

“No, ‘course not,” Lily hurriedly spoke, beginning to walk again, this time at a much faster pace. She felt Adam grab her arm and roughly pull her back towards him.

“You’re drunk?” He asked, though they both already knew the answer to that. “Why the  _ hell _ would you get drunk at school? And how? And -”

“Adam, stop, ‘m fine,” Lily tried to say, but Adam continued to speak over her. 

“How could you be so stupid? Do you know how dangerous and dumb that was?” He asked, angrily. Though her head was still fuzzy, she could still see the anger in her brother’s eyes. He was pissed. 

“It’s my life, Adam, not yours! I can do what I want.” Lily glared at him, crossing her arms over her chest and raising her chin, defiantly. 

Adam rolled his eyes, clearly frustrated with her. “Don’t be stupid, Lily. You’re thirteen! You’re still a freakin’ kid.”

“Almost fourteen, you ass,” She reminded him. “And it ain’t like you never drank when you were my age.”

“Not at school when I should be in class!” Adam yelled. He was a hot-head and it was beginning to show. His face was reddening with anger.

“It’s not that big of a deal! Goddamn, just leave me alone!” She yelled back. Okay, so maybe Adam wasn’t the only hot-head in the family. She began to walk away again, but Adam pulled her back by her arm.

“Yes it is! You’re such a damn idiot! You could’ve been expelled from school, you could’ve gotten alcohol poisoning or something - anything could’ve happened to you,” Adam lectured, jaw tightening and his hands balling into fists.

“So what?” She spat. She had  _ killed _ someone; maybe she deserved something bad to happen to her. 

“‘So what’?” He asked, his anger fading. She noticed his hands relaxing, too. “You’re my little sister; I don’t know what I’d do if somethin’ happened to you.”

Lily said nothing. She didn’t even know  _ what _ to say. Adam cared about her and her well being, but she couldn’t care less about herself. She was a murderer. It was all her fault that Tamara was dead. She didn’t think she could ever forgive herself. The alcohol had made her forget. It had made her feel better, maybe even a little happy - for a little while. 

“How could you care so little about yourself?” Adam whispered, clearly shocked and upset. His eyebrows furrowed with worry and Lily could clearly see the resemblance between him, Sam, and Dean. They all did the same ‘worried eyebrow’ thing when they were upset or worried about someone else - especially her.

Silence was the only reply her brother received. Instead of saying anything, Lily just looked away from him and began walking back to the motel. The argument with Adam had sobered her up even more, or maybe she just thought it had? She wasn’t really sure how it worked. All she knew was that her head was clearer than it had been before.

Once the duo entered the motel Lily headed straight for the bathroom, walking straight past Sam and ignoring his greeting, only stopping for a second to toss her bag onto her and Dean’s bed - the one closest to the door. She quickly locked the door of the bathroom, leaning against it and releasing a breath that she hadn’t known she was holding. Hopefully a shower would help her.

She could hear Sam and Adam talking from behind the door, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying; probably talking about her, she realized. She didn’t think that Adam would tell on her, but maybe this was too serious for him to hide. She hoped he wouldn’t tell. Sam and Dean would kick her ass for this. There wasn’t much that she could be grounded from, but Dean would ground her from what she had. Her mp3 player, the motel T.V, her cell phone; maybe he would confine her to the motel room, too. She wasn’t sure; she didn’t get grounded too often. Probably because she didn’t get caught too often. Probably because she was usually getting into trouble with Adam, and if they got caught he would take the blame. He was always sacrificing himself for her, it seemed, though usually not for something big. She sighed; he was a really good brother. She didn’t deserve him or Sam and Dean. A murderer didn’t deserve anything good.

The hot water felt good against Lily’s skin and she never wanted to get out of the shower. The feel of the heat was relaxing and comforting. Plus the rare moments where she could be alone were always treasured, especially since she and Adam were arguing.

She and Adam rarely ever fought like that. Sure, they had had their fair share of small fights over the years over stupid stuff, but they had rarely been in more serious fights like this one. They had fights over who got to eat the last slice of pizza or who got to have the T.V remote or over what movie they wanted to watch, not over something like this. They were always on each other’s side when it came to stuff like this, never against each other. It was a foreign thing to both of them and Lily didn’t like it. She didn’t like fighting with her best friend like that. But like Hell would she be apologizing. It was her life and Adam didn’t have the right to lecture her like that. 

She stepped out of the bathroom ten minutes later, her teeth freshly brushed to hide the alcohol smell, her wet hair dripping water onto the ugly, brown carpeting below her, and a thin white motel towel wrapped around her. Her head felt clear, but she knew she wasn’t completely sober yet. She just hoped that Sam and Dean wouldn’t notice. Avoiding Sam’s curious gaze, she made her way to the bed closest to the door and pulled her camouflage duffel bag from underneath it. She zipped it open and rifled through it one-handed, trying to find her favorite sweatpants and a T-shirt. She finally found the sweatpants and decided on her  _ Outsiders _ t-shirt.  _ The Outsiders _ was her favorite book, also known as the only book that she even slightly enjoyed reading (except Charlotte’s Web, but she hadn’t read that one in awhile), and Dean had gotten her the shirt for her thirteenth birthday - almost a whole year ago. 

She had been forced to read  _ The Outsiders _ for a book report for English class the year before. She had been adamant about just using the internet to do it, but Sam had forced her to read the book when she had mentioned the report to him. Though she had been annoyed with him at the time, Lily was secretly glad that he had made her read it. She had really related to the characters in it. The main character, Ponyboy, had also lost both his parents. He was also rough around the edges and he and his family were also poor, just like she and her family were. She saw a lot of herself and her family in the book and it comforted her to read about people who were so much like her. Sure, their lives weren’t exactly the same - not by a long shot - but it was as similar as it was going to get.

When she had left the bathroom, this time fully dressed, Dean was back from wherever he had gone. He was reading a newspaper article out loud to Sam and Adam, probably a lead on another case. Lily sighed, that probably meant that they were leaving again. They had only been in this town for a week and a half and now they were leaving. She hated it. And she had just met Margo as well. She already had to leave her. Margo had been the first friend (acquaintance?) that Lily had made at school in awhile. She had been so upset recently that she hadn’t been very open to making friends, but somehow she had at least become acquaintances with Margo - and now she had to leave her behind. Typical. Why had she even bothered to try and be friends with someone? She was always going to leave them behind.

“We’re leaving again, aren’t we?” She asked Dean, although she already knew the answer, trying not to let her disappointment show. She could see Adam looking at her out of the corner of her eye, but she purposely didn’t look at him. Despite her relaxing shower and having time by herself to cool down, she was still angry with him. She wasn’t sure if the two of them were still technically arguing, but she knew that he was still slightly angry with her as well. 

She hated having to move all the time. She had a hard enough time making friends without having to go to a new school basically every day. It was ridiculous; how was she expected to do well in school if she had to go to a new one so often? Lily didn’t know how Sam had gotten such good grades while living like this. She knew that she wouldn’t have been able to get good grades even if they didn’t move around so much; she just wasn’t smart. Sam’s success was seriously impressive. 

“Yeah, sorry, Lils,” Dean apologized, looking truly apologetic. 

“It’s fine,” She sighed, sitting down on the edge of their bed. “I’m used to it.” She wasn’t actually okay with it, but she knew that her brothers felt for her (they had been in the same situation when they were younger, after all) and that they felt bad about it. She just wished that they could stay somewhere for a few months at the very least.

The siblings left for Cicero, Indiana the very next morning. Adam and Lily had been regulated to the back seat of the Impala, as per usual, but it was much more awkward than it should’ve been as the two still hadn’t technically made up. 

It had been less than a day but Lily already missed her best friend. She missed talking and joking with him, especially now that she was stuck in a car for the next few hours with nothing much to do. She had quickly shoved her headphones in, tuning everything out with the sounds of Spanish music. She had recently downloaded a few Spanish songs onto her Mp3 player, the one that Adam had given her a few months ago. She wanted to feel closer to the Latina side of her as she had never really gotten to experience the culture, and she probably never truly would. She understood Spanish and she could speak it pretty decently, but only because she had been put into bilingual schools when she was younger as she hadn’t spoken English much back then. She was no longer fluent as she rarely spoke Spanish anymore; there had been no reason to, really, except for helping Sam practice his own Spanish for school. She just wished that she had been able to grow up Latina; the culture seemed so interesting and it was frustrating to be a part of it, but not  _ truly _ be a part of it. It was just another thing she had missed out on when her mother died.

Hours later the Impala pulled up in front of another motel, this time one in Cicero. Dean seemed far too eager about this case, practically shoving his siblings out of the car so he could go somewhere; Lily assumed it was to interview a witness or something along those lines, but she didn’t understand why he was so excited. She shrugged it off, not really thinking much of it.

Lily had barely gotten her duffel and bookbag out from the car before Dean pulled away, probably breaking a few traffic laws along the way. She furrowed her eyebrows, confused. Okay,  _ now _ he was acting really strange. “What’s up with him?” She asked Sam, pointedly ignoring Adam. 

Sam shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what Dean was doing. He sighed. “He’s going to go see his old girlfriend: Lisa,” He replied, pulling his own duffel bag onto his shoulder. The trio began walking to the motel’s entrance to check in. This motel didn’t  _ look _ as bad as some of the other ones they had stayed in, but looks could be deceiving.

“Wait a second.” Lily stopped suddenly. “There’s no case, is there? Did we seriously come here so Dean could have sex with some girl?” She asked, wrinkling her nose with disgust at the thought. There were some things that little sisters did  _ not  _ want to know. Sam and Adam said nothing, not that she was expecting Adam to answer her. “Oh, that’s disgusting,” She grumbled, walking towards the entrance again.

Once inside their latest motel room, where Adam had gotten his own roll-away bed, Lily collapsed onto the bed closest to the door. The blue, striped patterned blanket wasn’t exactly soft, but it didn’t feel too rough against her skin, thankfully. She had been to some motels where the blankets had felt like sandpaper. Leaning against one of the pillows, Lily closed her eyes to rest for a moment. She had taken a half an hour nap while in the car, but traveling was weirdly exhausting. Why was she tired from sitting down in a car for a couple hours? It made no sense to her.  

She could hear Sam and Adam shuffling around, setting their duffels down onto their beds and sitting down at the ‘kitchen’ table. She heard the sounds of Sam pulling his laptop from its case and opening it, probably double checking to see if there was a case in this town. Maybe there could be one after all, but Lily sincerely doubted it. That meant that they were only going to stay a couple of days at the most. Annoyance suddenly flooded through her, which quickly turned to anger. She didn’t want to go to a new school for three days before leaving again. Why couldn’t she have a normal life? 

The good news what that it was Saturday, so maybe she wouldn’t start at a new school until the next hunt. But how long would the next hunt last? Lily sighed, frustrated with everything. She needed to clear her head again. She wanted another drink. Her eyes shot open, an idea forming in her head, and she took note that Sam looked distracted, typing on his laptop. Adam had laid on his own bed, the T.V remote in hand. With a click of a button the T.V was on and he began to flick through the different channels, trying to find a horror movie, Lily thought to herself. Adam loved horror movies, but she herself wasn’t that big of a fan of them. They were so fake. She knew what real horror looked like, and those movies weren’t it. Adam and Dean thought they were cool, though.

“I’m gonna go look around this town and see if there’s anything fun to do,” Lily spoke, sitting up and running a hand through her hair. Maybe she could find someone to buy her a drink? But who would buy a thirteen-year-old alcohol? Who would risk being arrested?

Sam finally looked up from his laptop. “Take Adam with you; I don’t want you going by yourself.”

Lily glared at him. “I’m not a little kid, Sam!” Anger flooded through her, again. It seemed as if she were always angry recently. Nothing seemed to be going right for her. Why was everyone so set on ruining her life? Why did they keep treating her like some little kid? Why was the universe so against her? “I can go on my own.”

Sam sighed, sitting up in his seat. “Look, I know you think that you’re not a kid anymore and -” 

“I’m not!” Lily interrupted. “I’m about to turn fourteen in like a week.”

“Lily, you’re still a kid. And I worry about what could happen to you if you go walking around on your own, alright?” Sam spoke calmly. 

“This is ridiculous! I’m almost fourteen, but I get treated like I’m two?” She asked, becoming angrier by the second. She wasn’t some little kid that they had to protect. She was a teenager - practically an adult! It was just so frustrating. She balled her hands into fists, her fingernails cutting into her palms. It hurt, not that she was paying much attention to the pain, but it was getting her frustration out. 

Lily was fed up. She quickly got up off the bed and headed towards the door. She tossed on a jacket and left, slamming the door behind her before either one of her brothers could say anything. She wasn’t a little kid! What was it gonna take for them to understand that? What would it take for them to treat her like an adult? What would it take for them to know that she was capable of handling herself? 

As she got farther and farther away from the motel, Lily could feel her anger lessening. The fresh air was doing her some good. Now if only she could get some alcohol out here. If only she were old enough to buy it herself. She sighed, she couldn’t wait until she was older. Everything would be so much easier then. Her brothers wouldn’t be so damn protective; they wouldn’t be treating her like a toddler -  they would respect her. They would let her join in on hunts more, and she wouldn’t have to go to school. Everything would be so much simpler then. Lily couldn’t wait to finally have some independence, to be free. 

Lost in her thoughts, she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going.  _ Crap _ . She had no idea how to get back to the motel. Looking around, she realized she was at a playground. Like that was going to help her. She sighed, heading over to the swingsets. She sat down on the first swing she came upon. The playground was pretty much deserted. There were only a few kids there, but they were just standing by the slides, staring off into space. Lily furrowed her eyebrows; that was strange. What kind of kid came to the playground just to creepily stare off into space?

Turning away, Lily pulled out her cell phone and flipped it open, checking for messages. There were five missed calls from Sam and three missed calls from Adam. Dean didn’t know she was gone yet, she presumed. She sighed, flipping her phone shut again. She didn’t want to talk to them, yet. She just wanted to be alone. Looking out at the playground, she thought about all the fun times she had missed as a child. She found herself, for what seemed like the millionth time, wondering what her life would be like if her mother had never died. Things would be so different. Things would probably be better; she wasn’t sure how life could get much worse than this. 

She should’ve gotten a town map. She had no idea how to get anywhere from where she was - and who in Hell knew where she was? She just needed to find a library or something. Maybe she could do some more research on Dean’s deal before she called someone to come get her. Not that she wanted to admit that she had gotten lost, but she seriously had no idea how to get back and she didn’t want to be out here when it got dark. Sure, she had said that she could handle herself, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Especially considering she was almost completely weaponless; she only had her butterfly knife and the knife that Dean had given her for her birthday on her, both in the pockets of her leather jacket. 

Lily pulled out the knife that Dean had given her, smiling sadly. She had been so excited when he had given it to her, finally feeling like a real hunter. Running her fingers down the polished wood, she found herself wondering what she was going to do once he was gone.  _ If  _ he went away, she forcefully reminded herself. She and Sam were going to figure it all out, she was sure of it. She  _ had  _ to be sure of it, otherwise she would be falling apart. Well, falling more apart than she was already. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by the annoying sound of her cell phone ringing. Groaning, she pulled her phone out of her sweatpants’ pocket to see who was calling. ‘My favorite brother’ flashed on the small screen of her flip phone. She chuckled as she read the name; she had forgotten that Dean had set his name as that in her phone. Sighing, she knew she should answer, but she didn’t want to deal with  _ another  _ one of her brothers lecturing her today. Lily knew it was inevitable, though, so she flipped her phone open, pressed the green call button, and held the cellphone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Lils,  _ damn it _ , where the hell are you?” Dean asked, his voice a higher pitch than usual - a clear sign that he was beyond worried about her. Guilt washed over her; she hadn’t meant to worry her brothers, but she was just so damn frustrated with them and with  _ everything _ . She had just needed a break. 

“I don’t know.”

“The hell do you mean you ‘don’t know’?” 

“I mean that I have no freakin’ idea where I am.”

“How do you not -” Dean paused, sighing. He was clearly frustrated, but trying to stay calm. “Just tell me what’s around you.” 

“Um, I’m at a playground, if that helps,” Lily replied, looking around to see if there was anything else to help identify where she was. A few trees, some grass, some houses nearby, that was about it besides the playground. “Look, I would go back to the motel myself, but I don’t know how to get back.”

“And why did you leave by yourself?”

Lily rolled her eyes, grateful that Dean couldn’t see her. “Because I did,” She snapped. “Now are you gonna find me and pick me up?” She didn’t mean to snap at Dean - he was really the last person she wanted to argue with, considering everything - but it had just happened. She had been snapping at everyone recently. 

“Well, there’s only three playgrounds in town,” Dean spoke, sounding distracted, as if he were reading something (probably a map, Lily figured) and speaking at the same time. “Is there a school next door?”

Lily looked around in all directions, but only saw houses. “Um, no.”

“Okay, so I think I know where you are. Stay put,” Dean spoke, before hanging up on her. 

“Bye, nice talking to you,” She spoke, sarcastically, knowing that she was not going to get a reply. 

The next twenty minutes were spent in silence, lightly swinging the swing she sat in and crunching the gravel beneath her feet. She loved the sound of gravel; she couldn’t explain why, but it was probably her favorite noise. Something about being outside in the fresh air and hearing that noise beneath her comforted her. 

There was no mistaking the sound of the Impala as it pulled up the street. Lily smiled; that noise comforted her, too. It reminded her of family; something she would be lost without. 

Dean parked ‘baby’ and made his way over to where his sister was sitting, still on the same swing she had been on. He sat down in the swing next to her, staying silent for the time being. The two siblings just sat there, saying nothing. It wasn’t an awkward silence; it was more peaceful.

“I’m sorry,” Lily said, shattering the silence between them. It was hard to admit that she was sorry, considering that she rarely ever did. She never liked to admit that she was wrong. “I shouldn’t have walked out and I shouldn’t have snapped at you or argued with Sam and Adam and I shouldn’t have been a bitch in general and,” She paused her apology, letting out a sigh. “And I’m sorry, alright?” She had almost admitted to the drinking, but had thought better of it. Maybe her brothers didn’t need to know everything.

Dean nodded, but still said nothing at first. Finally, after a few moments of more silence, he spoke. “Are you alright?” 

Surprised, Lily turned to look at her brother. That hadn’t been what she was expecting. She had been expecting to get yelled at for being a bitch to her brothers and for walking out on them and for disobeying Sam and for just being in a horrible mood for the past few weeks. It was always surprising her how much her brothers cared about her recently; she didn’t feel like she deserved it. Lily nodded, slowly. “Yeah, I guess.” She wasn’t really alright, but she didn’t want anyone to know that - though she knew she wasn’t hiding it as well as she liked to think she was. She especially didn’t want Dean to know that she wasn’t okay. She needed him to think that she was fine; she had to be strong for him. He was always strong for her during other hard times, and now it was her turn. He was the one having to deal with his impending fate the most, of course, and he didn’t need to worry about her on top of it. 

“No, you’re not,” Dean said. “You’re sad, frustrated, devastated; you feel hopeless, right?” He asked.

Lily raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t been expecting that, either. “Yeah,” She said, softly. “I just don’t know what I’m gonna do without you,” Her voice cracked as she became closer and closer to tears. The thought of Dean actually, really dying and going to Hell was just too much for her. So much for being strong for him. Her vision blurred as tears began to well up in her eyes. “I keep trying to find a way for you to get out of the deal, but I  _ can’t _ and I just -” She choked back a sob, trying to keep her composure, but this was the first time she was actually talking about the deal to someone since she had found out. She and Adam hadn’t even really talked about it. “I just can’t let you die, Dean!” Lily began to sob, hiccupping and letting out loud cries as she let herself go. It was only her and Dean here, unless you counted the weird children who were  _ still _ just standing around, so she didn’t care as much about letting her guard down.

Dean quickly crouched down in front of her, holding her cheeks and wiping her tears away with his thumbs. His touch was so gentle that Lily could barely feel it. She subconsciously leaned into his touch, needing to be comforted. “Lils, it’s gonna be okay, I promise you,” He tried to reassure her, but she shook her head.

“No, it won’t, Dean!” She exclaimed through her sobs. “You’re going to Hell and I can’t stop it! I can’t -” Lily broke down completely, not being able to do anything but cry. She wasn’t sure when it happened, but she slid off her swing and collapsed into Dean’s arms. She wasn’t sure exactly how long they sat in the gravel together, him holding her in his arms and comforting her, but it seemed as if it were hours. 

Eventually Lily sat up, wiping the leftover tears from her eyes and sniffling. “Dean, you notice anything weird about this park?” She asked, her voice cracking due to all the crying she had just done. 

Clearly surprised at her sudden change of subject, Dean took a moment to register her question before he answered. “Uh - no?” He replied, more like a question than an actual answer, though. 

She smiled, amused at how confused he was. “We’re at a playground in the middle of the day on a  _ Saturday _ and there’s barely any kids around,” Lily pointed out, standing up and beginning to wipe the dirt off her sweatpants. “And the ones that are here haven’t really moved in more than half an hour.” Dean glanced around the playground, clearly just realizing how weird it actually was. “What’s up with the kids around here?” Lily asked, more rhetorically than not, and holding out a hand to help her brother up. 

On their way back to the motel, Lily couldn’t help but beat herself up over her breakdown. She had  _ just  _ promised herself that she would be strong for him, and then she broke. Dean was the one actually going to Hell, but Lily hadn’t seen him have a breakdown about it, yet. She felt like an ass, to put it lightly. How could she make it all about her when he was the one that’s gonna be suffering? 

Dean informed her that there actually was a case in this town, after all. A suspiciously high amount of people had been dying in home accidents recently.  Add that in with the fact that kids were acting strangely around here definitely pointed to a case. Before they reached the motel, Dean stopped the Impala by a park. Lily furrowed her eyebrows in confusion; why weren’t they going straight there? “I wanna see if there’s anymore weird kids around or if the kids at that playground were just weird or something,” Dean supplied, after noticing his sister’s look. Lily nodded, and the duo exited the Impala.

It was weird to be sitting in the passenger seat of the car; that hadn’t happened since - well,  _ ever _ . Well, she couldn’t remember the last time it had happened, so it was basically like her first time. It had always been one of her brothers in the passenger seat, never her. Being the youngest was sometimes a sucky deal. 

They walked around the park for awhile, not really noticing anything strange. The sun was shining, the grass was a deep shade of green, there were kids running around -  it all seemed perfectly normal. So what was up with those other kids at the playground? 

Dean seemed to notice something off in the distance as he changed the direction they were walking in. Confused, Lily followed behind. He approached a kid that was sitting on a bench alone. This really made Lily raise an eyebrow; the hell was her brother doing? She sighed, she  _ really _ did not want him getting arrested because this kid’s mom or dad thought he was a pedophile. 

“Hey, Ben,” Dean said, taking a seat next to the kid. Dean knew this kid? How? Lily stood next to where he sat, not wanting to sit down. She had no clue who this kid was and, besides, Lily was horrible with children anyway; it had always been Dean who was good with kids. Probably because he had had to raise three of them when he was still growing up himself. 

“Hey,” Ben said, seemingly recognizing him. “You were at my birthday party.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, I’m Dean.”

Lily’s eyebrows furrowed, again. Was she ever going to not be confused? “Birthday party?” She asked Dean. “Why were you at his birthday party?’

“Um, Lils, this is Ben - Lisa’s son,” Dean introduced. 

“Lisa?” Lily asked, still confused. Then she remembered her conversation with Sam and Adam from that morning. A smirk etched its way onto her face. “Oh,  _ Lisa _ ,” She spoke, suggestively. 

“Ben, this is my baby sister Lily,” Dean said, purposely ignoring Lily’s comment and changing the subject, clearly not wanting to talk about it in front of Ben - or at all, at least not with her.

Now it was Ben’s turn to furrow his eyebrows. “Baby? She doesn’t look like a baby to me.” 

“Well, I say baby because she’s so much younger than I am,” Dean explained, patiently. Lily smiled; Dean was so good with kids, it always warmed her heart to see him interact with them. 

Ben nodded, but he looked sort of upset. Lily noticed he was holding an empty black case in his hands, probably one for a handheld game. She herself had a gameboy, but she never really played it much. She made a mental note to dig that out of her duffel when she got back to the motel. 

“Everything okay? Somethin’ wrong?” Dean asked Ben, but the kid only shrugged in response. Dean glanced down at Ben’s empty game case and then towards the group of boys in front of them playing on a handheld. Lily put two and two together at about the same time as Dean did: that was Ben’s game those boys were playing with. 

“That your game?” Lily asked, though she already figured it was. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. She leaned against the bench’s armrest, still not really wanting to sit down with them. She wasn’t sure why; maybe it was because majority of kids hated her. That was just a known fact in their family. It was more of a running joke with them than anything, really.

“Ryan Humphrey borrowed it, and now he won’t give it back,” Ben said, sounding defeated and upset. 

“Well, do you want me to go and -” Dean was saying, starting to stand up.

“No! Don’t go over there!” Ben exclaimed, grabbing onto Dean’s arm. “Only bitches send a grown up.”

Lily choked back a laugh; Ben sounded so much like Dean and Adam - it was uncanny. A thought suddenly struck the young girl.  _ No way _ . She scanned Ben and Dean’s faces, looking for similarities. Though Ben was obviously much younger, the two did look somewhat similar.  _ No way. _ Ben was Dean’s son. Lily was sure of it. They were too much alike for Ben not to be. Lily tried not to let her shock show, but her eyes widened as she realized it all. 

Dean looked impressed with Ben. “You’re not wrong.”

“And I’m not a bitch,” Ben replied, sitting back in his seat again.

Lily’s eyes widened more. There was no way that Ben wasn’t Dean’s kid. What did that mean for them now? Would they stay here in Cicero so Dean could be with his kid? Would they move in with Ben and Lisa and kind of be a proper family? Lily wasn’t sure what to think; it was all so crazy. Her heart sank as she remembered Dean’s deal; how would Ben feel when he found out that his father was going to die in less than a year?

“Is that Humphrey?” Dean asked Ben, looking at the larger of the boys in the group that had stolen Ben’s game. “The one that needs to lay off the burgers?”

Lily hit Dean on the arm. “Don’t be a jerk, Dean! Besides, you’re one to talk,” She spoke, finally sitting down next to her brother on the bench. “Do you know how many burgers you eat in a week?”

Dean purposely ignored his sister and turned to Ben, telling him what to do about the whole Humphrey problem. Lily rolled her eyes at her brother; he was already teaching his son how to be a horrible person. 

Dean and Lily watched, side by side, as Ben approached Humphrey. Ben glanced back at them, and Lily noticed Dean giving him a thumbs up. She chuckled at him; he was being such a bad influence, but at least this was going to be good. She and Dean were too far away to hear what the kids were saying, so they just watched with anticipation. Ben began to turn back towards Dean and Lily, but he quickly turned back around and kicked Ryan ‘where the sun don’t shine’ - twice in quick recession.

Lily laughed, covering her mouth with her hands. That was too damn good. Ryan fell to the ground, clearly groaning in pain, and Ben just stepped over him, grabbed his game, and headed back to the bench. Lily couldn’t stop laughing and she could hear Dean chuckling beside her. She hadn’t laughed that much in what seemed like years.

“Guys, that was awesome!” Ben exclaimed, a big grin on his face, as he ran back over. Dean gave him a high-five and Lily followed suit. Despite that being a really bad thing to teach a kid, it had been funny as Hell  _ and _ Ben had been able to get his game back all on his own. That counted for something, right?

“Benjamin Isaac Braeden,” Lily heard a woman’s voice say, angrily. A brown-haired woman approached, and Lily instantly knew that that was Lisa. “What has gotten into you?” Lily assumed that Lisa was using her ‘mom voice’, but she never got to experience that for herself first hand, only in the T.V shows and movies. She sounded strict and demanding, and Lily couldn’t help but wonder if her own mom had had a ‘mom voice’. 

“He stole my game!” Ben exclaimed. 

“So you kick him?” Lisa asked, still furious with her son. “Since when is -” She stopped talking when she noticed Dean and connected the dots. Dean’s smile instantly faded as he realized that Lisa was about to be pissed at him. Lily chuckled at his ‘I didn’t do it’ expression, covering her mouth with her hand to muffle the laughter; she didn’t want to be yelled at by Lisa next.

“Did  _ you _ tell my son to beat up that kid?” Lisa asked Dean, furiously. 

Lily was still trying to muffle her laughter, but she was clearly failing. Dean glared at her quickly before turning back to Lisa. “What? Somebody had to teach him how to kick the bully in the nads,” Dean said, defending himself. Lily couldn’t help but laugh even harder at that - the use of the word ‘nads’ just made it even funnier. 

“Who asked you to teach him anything?” Lisa sneered, strands of her hair wisping out of place due to the wind. 

“Just relax -” Dean was saying, but Lisa roughly grabbed his arm, cutting him off. She tugged him away from the bench so that Ben wouldn’t overhear, but considering that Lily could still hear everything being said, so could Ben.

“What are you even still doing here?” Lisa asked him. “We had one weekend together a million years ago. You don’t know me. You have no business with my son.” Lisa walked back to the bench and grabbed Ben’s hand.

“Lisa,” Dean called out, trying to get her to stop.

“Just leave us alone,” She said, pulling Ben away. 

Lily looked at Dean and could tell that he was more upset about this than he was letting on. Sometimes she was able to read him like a book, just like he could to her. She walked over to him and touched his arm, comfortingly. She gave him a soft smile, but it didn’t really help. That was his son, after all. Unless he didn’t know that Ben was his son, but how could he not? He and Ben had so much in common; it would be crazy if Ben wasn’t his.

To Lily’s shock, Ben ran back and hugged them both. He only came up to Lily’s chest level, which made the hug even more awkward than it already would have been. Lily was not a hugger - especially not from people she had just met that day, and especially not with children. But this particular child - her nephew, she supposed - actually seemed to like her, and that was a rare thing. Lily patted Ben’s back awkwardly, wanting the hug to end as soon as possible. 

As Dean stared after Ben and Lisa, Lily glanced at the trio of kids standing nearby. They stood in a line, all three of them looking towards Ben and Lisa’s retreating figures. But then, in perfect sync, the three of them turned and stared Lily straight in the eyes. Her eyes widened in shock. She quickly elbowed Dean in the stomach, probably harder than she should’ve, turning his attention away from Lisa and Ben, who were now quite far away.

“Ouch, Lily, what?” 

Lily subtly nodded in the direction of the kids she had noticed, who were all still staring at her. They made her feel uneasy. Their lifeless eyes just continued to stare at her and Lily had to force herself to look away. She looked up at Dean, and he nodded at her. Silently, the siblings came to the same conclusion: there was definitely something wrong with the children in the town. 

Dean and Lily finally walked back into the motel room, Lily feeling slightly apprehensive about it; she still felt bad, and even a bit embarrassed, about the argument she and Sam had gotten into. What if he was still angry with her? Though her brothers had more to be angry with her for than that argument, she reminded herself. Everything seemed to be a glaring reminder of what she had done, that she had killed someone. Maybe it was because she felt so guilty, and the guilt wasn’t going away.

Sam was sitting at the table, his laptop open, a determined look on his face as he scrolled down the webpage he was on. He was clearly researching something. Adam, however, was still laying on his bed, the T.V remote tossed lazily at his side. It looked as if he hadn’t moved since Lily had left. For someone so athletic he was incredibly lazy. 

“Okay, there is definitely something up with the kids in this town,” Dean said as he and Lily entered the room. Lily shut the door behind her and kicked her boots off, kicking them to the side. She pulled her leather jacket off and tossed it on top of her shoes on the floor, not really caring about being unorganized or anything. She cast her eyes away from the ground, catching Adam’s stare. Looking away quickly, she tried to busy herself by fishing her butterfly knife from her jacket. She didn’t need it at the moment; she just wanted any excuse to not have to deal with what had happened earlier that day and the day before. 

“Tell me about it,” Sam replied, not taking his eyes off his screen. Dean walked over to his and Lily’s bed and pulled his own jacket off. “So, what do you guys know about changelings?” Sam continued, glancing up at his siblings.

“Evil monster babies?” Dean asked while folding his jacket and placing it on the bed in front of him. 

Lily furrowed her eyebrows. “Evil monster babies?”

“Evil monster babies.” Dean nodded, confirming that that was indeed what he’d said. 

“Not exactly,” Sam butted in. 

“Can’t they be a kid, too?” Adam asked, only glancing away from his movie for a split second. His eyes quickly traveled back to the screen and Lily saw a ‘werewolf’ howl beneath the full moon. She glowered at the T.V; she really  _ hated _ werewolves. 

“Yep,” Sam confirmed, nodding. “They’re kids.”

“Creepy, ‘stare at you like you’re lunch’ kids?” Dean asked. 

“Yeah, there’s one in every victim’s house.” Sam showed them a map of the town. There were red circles with x’s drawn around each of the houses where the children were.

“So, what defines someone as a kid?” Lily asked, concerned. “Like, how old until you’re not considered a kid by these things?”

Sam and Dean shared a look. 

After a beat of silence, it was Sam that answered. “No idea.”

“Probably twelve though, right?” Lily asked them, looking at each of her brothers in turn, trying to get confirmation. She didn’t want to be young enough to be taken, and she also didn’t want to be young enough to still be considered a child, despite what Sam or Dean or Adam or anyone said. She was a teenager - not a kid. 

Her brothers exchanged looks again, this time Adam even tore his attention away from his monster movie to join in. 

“It should be twelve - any older than that and you’re a teen,” Lily said, after a few moments of silence. “Hence the phrase  _ teen _ ager.”

“Lils, I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Dean said, clearly trying to make her feel better. Lily sighed, annoyed and a bit fearful, but she knew if anything happened her brothers wouldn’t let her die. But maybe they should. She had murdered. Okay, she hadn’t meant to, but she still did it. That blood was stained on her hands; did she really deserve to live? And how was it fair that Dean, one of the most caring people she knew, was going to die in less than a year but she gets to live? She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it all, tossing and turning at night until she just decided to research instead, and even if she did sleep her nightmares had been getting worse - more graphic and more terrifying each time. There was no escaping her guilt - except for when she had been drinking. She needed another drink - and soon. 

God, she felt like an alcoholic.

“So, changelings can perfectly mimic children,” Sam spoke from his bed, minutes later, talking mostly to Dean and Adam. “According to lore, they climb in the window, snatch the kid. Y’know, there were marks on the windows at one of the kid’s houses; looked to me like blood,” He explained. 

“So, it’s definitely a changeling then?” Adam asked, getting up off his bed and walking towards Sam’s laptop. The changeling lore pages were still open, so Adam sat in the vacated seat at the table and began scrolling through the research. 

Sam nodded. “No doubt about it.”

Lily leaned back on the bed, resting her head against the headboard. She knew her brothers probably wouldn’t let her help with this hunt. She was only allowed to help on the easiest of hunts - the ones that her brothers didn’t even need her help with.

“So, the changeling grabs the kid, assumes its form, joins the happy fam just for kicks?” Dean asked, while messing with what looked to be a homemade torch - it was put together using duct tape. Changelings were killed with fire, Lily assumed.  _ Awesome _ . That would be so cool to see, she thought to herself. 

Adam chuckled a bit. “No,” He replied. “They feed off the mother,” He said, clearly reading that bit of information from the lore on the computer. 

“Oh, so they won’t take me either way, then,” Lily butted in, feeling conflicted. “I don’t have a mom.” She was obviously glad that she wouldn’t be able to be taken even if she was considered a child, but she was more upset that she didn’t have a mother. She’d be gladly kidnapped by a changeling anyday if it meant having her mother around again. She’d give almost anything to have her mother around again. 

Her brothers suddenly all looked grim, and Lily somewhat regretted even saying anything. Now she had reminded them of their own mothers, too. Could she do anything right? It didn’t seem like it. 

Dean held up his torch. “So, fire’s the only way to kill ‘em?” He asked, looking a bit excited about it as well. Lily cracked a small smile at his expression. He thought it was cool as Hell, too. 

Sam and Adam nodded.

“Yep,” Sam replied.

“Great. We’ll just bust in, drag the kids outside, torch ‘em on the front lawn,” Dean said, sarcastically.

“Some cool entertainment for the neighborhood,” Adam joked, only glancing up from Sam’s laptop for a second to grin at his siblings. Lily could see Sam rolling his eyes out of the corner of her eye, but she could also see a smile tugging on the corners of his lips. 

She shrugged. “I’d pay to see it,” She said, nonchalant. It would be cool as Hell, even though there would probably be all those screaming people, but whatever. 

“Okay, no, however cool it may be, we can’t do that.” Dean packed the torch into a bag. “And what about the real kids?” He asked Sam. 

“According to lore,” Sam began. “They stash them underground somewhere. I don’t know why, but if it’s true, the real kids could be out there somewhere.” 

“So, maybe in a sewer or something?” Lily suggested, sitting up and crossing her legs in front of her. 

“Maybe,” Adam agreed, and Lily realized that that was the first word he had said to her since he had caught her drunk at school. Did that mean he wasn’t angry with her anymore? Lily was sure that if he knew about her breakdown from earlier that he wouldn’t be angry anymore - not even close to angry. She knew that he cared about her a lot, and Lily once again found herself wondering why.

“Well, we better start looking,” Dean said. There was a beat of silence - not an awkward silence, just a silence. “So, any kid in the neighborhood could be taken?” He asked, slight worry in his tone. Someone who had just met Dean wouldn’t be able to detect it, especially not behind his calmed exposure, but Lily could - and she was sure that Adam and Sam could, too. 

“Yep,” Adam and Sam replied, simultaneously. 

It suddenly clicked to Lily that Dean was worried about Ben. 

“We gotta make a stop,” Dean demanded, grabbing his jacket off one of the beds and picking up the bag he had packed.. “I gotta check on someone.”

“Dean, we don’t have time to -”

“We have to.”

Lily got up off the bed. “I’m coming, too.”

Sam sighed. “Lily, you -”

Lily cut him off. “Look, I won’t get taken by them, so it’s safe for me to come with. And, besides, how am I s’posed to become a good hunter if I don’t go on  _ any _ hunts?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. None of her brothers said anything, so Lily figured it was time to pull out the big guns. Trying to make herself look as cute and innocent as possible, she widened her eyes, trying to look sad, and puckered her bottom lip out a little. “Please? I’ll do whatever you say and I won’t do anything dumb this time, I promise!” 

There was another beat of silence. 

“Fine,” Dean caved. Lily internally smirked; he was a sucker for puppy dog eyes. “Just stick close by and if you do  _ anything _ dumb you’re not going on another hunt until you’re thirty,” He threatened, but Lily knew that it was just an over exaggerated and empty threat. 

“Thanks, Dean!” She got up and hugged him, tightly, before grabbing her jacket off the floor, slipping it on, and quickly throwing on a pair of sneakers. 

The car was awkwardly silent while Dean was at Lisa’s house, checking to see if Ben was okay. Sam sat in the front seat, reading a lore book, while Adam sat next to her, staring out the window, clearly lost in his thoughts. Lily couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking about. Was it her? Or maybe it was Dean’s deal? Adam hadn’t said much about Dean’s deal; he had been more concerned with comforting her than anything else. He was locking his emotions inside, like a regular Winchester, but Lily knew he’d have to talk about it at some point . . . right? She hoped so. She just really wanted him to talk to her in general. It’d been almost two days since they’d gotten into that argument. If Lily knew that drinking would make Adam so mad, she might not have done it. Her brothers were too important to her.

Lily saw Dean running back to the car, looking frantic. 

Something was wrong.

“The changelings took Ben!” He exclaimed, running to the driver’s side of the car. Lily’s jaw dropped. What if Ben wasn’t okay? That was Dean’s  _ son _ . Her  _ nephew. _ What if he was already dead? 

“What?” Sam asked from the passenger side as Dean sat down. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Dean replied. “I checked his windowsill.”

“Blood?” Adam piped in from beside Lily. He had clearly been pulled from his thoughts when Dean had arrived. 

“I don’t think it is blood,” Dean confessed. “And I think I know where the kids are.” He started up the car and the engine began to rumble. 

“What?” Lily heard herself ask. “How?” 

“Just trust me,” Dean said, putting the car into drive.

Dean drove down the street, probably at a very illegal speed, and pulled into the driveway of a house that was still being built, but there was already a ‘For Sale’ sign out front. Beside the sign was a large pile of red dirt. Lily followed her brothers out of the car, feeling excited but nervous about this. She was rarely allowed to go on hunts with them, but hopefully now that she was almost fourteen that would change.

The quartet stopped next to the pile of dirt. Dean scooped a pile of it into his hands to feel it, causing Lily to raise an eyebrow; what was this about? Then it clicked: it wasn’t blood on the windowsills, but red dirt. This was where the kids were. 

“Red dirt,” Sam whispered. He chuckled, softly. “That’s what was on the windowsills.”

“You and Ads take the front, me and Lily’ll go around,” Dean spoke, grabbing the packed bag from the back floor of the Impala. He opened it and tossed one of the torches to Adam and grabbing the other for himself. Lily grinned. This was going to be fun. 

Following Dean, Lily kept her guard up. Anything could pop out at her at any moment. She was being trained well; first by her father, but now by her brothers. She quickly began to rack her brain for everything she had ever been taught about hunting.

Every now and then Lily would glance behind her, just to make sure that no one was behind them. She could see Dean glancing behind himself as well, but probably just to check up on her. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work; he was supposed to watch their front and she was supposed to watch their back - he was supposed to trust her with that. The fact that he kept checking up on her made a wave of annoyance wash over her. She could handle this.

They entered the house quietly, Dean holding the torch and Lily holding the flashlight. There was a plastic covering in the back doorway as there hadn’t been a back door added on, yet. Dean pushed it out of the way, holding it open for Lily to pass by first. Lily did, flashing the light around the room, trying to see the kids or one of the changelings. The room was completely empty. The kids were probably in the basement, Lily realized, as Sam had said they’d be stored underground. 

Lily heard footsteps to her right. Quickly whipping around, she pointed the flashlight in that direction, but saw nothing. Just some more barren walls. She looked back at Dean, but he didn’t say anything. Internally shrugging, she began to walk forward - slowly, as she didn’t want anything to hear her. Dean stepped ahead of her, and she followed him through a doorway, making sure to flash her light around to look for anything out of the ordinary. 

There was a clanging noise from somewhere else in the house. She glanced up at Dean, and he glanced back at her. That could’ve been Sam or Adam, but it was more likely that it was something else. 

Dean began heading downstairs, trying to follow the source of the noise. The air in the house was noticeably cold, and Lily could feel goosebumps rising on her skin. Though maybe it was just her sudden nervousness. Her heart pounded so loudly she could almost hear it and, for a split second, she almost regretted coming with them. She shook that thought from her mind; she wanted this. She wanted to be a hunter, and this was hunting. She couldn’t be getting cold feet about it.

They reached the lower floor and continued to look around, Lily flashing her light in all corners of the darkened room. There was a banging noise again, and Lily felt herself jump a bit in surprise. Mentally reprimanding herself, she hoped that Dean hadn’t noticed, but she knew he probably had; they had been trained to notice everything. Lily followed Dean to the next room, slightly apprehensively. She knew  _ something _ was going to pop out at them and it was killing her that she didn’t know when it would happen. 

The next room was different. There was something there. Furrowing her eyebrows, Lily walked forward, flashing her light onto whatever was in the room. 

They were cages.

Eyes widening, Lily saw a small hand reach up towards the light she was flashing. She gasped softly. The children were here, and being trapped in cages. Lily didn’t recognize the child; it was a little girl with long, red hair. She looked terrified. Lily dropped her flashlight and tried to unlatch the cage, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Hang in there,” She whispered to the little girl, trying to comfort her. “You’re safe now, I promise.” 

“Ben,” Dean gasped, softly. Lily turned to see Dean looking into a cage a few feet away. She sighed with relief; Ben was going to be okay. They had found him. “I’m gonna get you outta here, okay?”

Dean grabbed a thin pipe off the ground and began to hit one of the locks with it. He successfully knocked it off, and Lily sighed with relief. Dean pulled the cage open and pulled Ben out. 

Lily scanned the ground, looking for another. In the far corner of the room there were two more. She grinned as she saw them, but quickly composed herself and ran over to pick one up. Heading over to the closest cage, she began to hit the lock with the pipe, but it was a lot harder than Dean had made it look. Panting, she continued to beat the lock with her pipe until it finally fell off. It had taken her longer than it had taken Dean, but she had done it. She let out a deep breath and pulled the chains off the cage, opening the door and helping a little boy out. She and Dean continued to let the kids free, still trying to stay as quiet as possible.

Ben helped the other kids get out of their cages, and Lily was surprised to see how well he was handling it all. She sent Dean a bewildered look, which he met with a matching one; he thought Ben was being brave as Hell, too. The kid was only eight, but he seemed to be more brave than Lily herself was. She quickly got back to work, knocking the lock off of another cage and helping the little red-headed girl out, who was now crying softly.

“You’re okay,” Lily whispered, wiping the girl’s tears off the same way that Dean had done for her earlier that day. Maybe she wasn’t as bad with kids as she had thought she was. Or maybe it was just the adrenaline making her better at it. Either way, she felt proud that she was handling these kids so well. 

Once all the kids had been freed, Dean began to push them away from the window, not wanting them to get hurt when he broke the glass. Lily helped push the kids away, and quickly stood between them and the window. 

“Cover your eyes!” Dean yelled, throwing the whole ‘staying quiet’ bit out the window. Lily tried to cover as many kids as she could with her own body, but she couldn’t cover all of them. Thankfully, they all did as Dean said and covered their eyes. The worst of the broken glass landed on her and Dean. She faintly felt a few bits of glass pierce her skin, but that didn’t matter at the moment. Getting the kids to safety was the most important thing. 

Dean began to look for something to lay in the window so that the kids wouldn’t get hurt when crawling out. Lily scanned the room for a moment, but she couldn’t see a cloth or anything like it around.

“Here,” Ben said, pulling off his own jacket. “Use this.” He tossed it to Dean and Lily raised her eyebrows, again. Ben was seriously impressive; how could an eight-year-old be so brave and intelligent? 

Dean placed Ben’s jacket in the window, covering up most of the glass fragments that had landed in the windowsill. 

“All right,” He said, smoothing out the jacket. “Ben, let’s go.”

“Him first,” Ben said, pushing another boy towards Dean. Ben was a true Winchester, Lily thought to herself, smiling at the boy, softly. 

“Dean! Lily!” Lily heard Sam and Adam’s voices call out in the distance. Lily furrowed her eyebrows. What was going on? They had already found the kids. “There’s a mother!” Sam exclaimed, entering the room. 

“A mother changeling?” Dean asked, as he began to boost a kid up to the window. Lily rushed to his side, helping the kid reach the window. Lily grabbed the next kid and struggled to lift her up to the window, but the girl grabbed onto it and crawled out. 

“We need to get these kids out now,” Adam said, grabbing another kid and boosting him up to the smashed window. The boy climbed through and Adam grabbed another and repeated the process with a couple more kids.

“I guess that’s why the changeling’s keepin’ these kids alive - so the mom can snack on them,” Dean spoke, grunting as another kid stepped on his hands to get to the window. 

Lily saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned and saw a woman in a pansuit enter the room. The little red-headed girl noticed her, too, and began to scream - loudly. Lily was sure that she had pierced Lily’s eardrum. 

The woman threw Dean to the next room and Lily gasped. Adam and Sam ran to his rescue, leaving her to get the last out the kids out of the house. Keeping an eye on the fight happening, she lifted another kid and shoved her through the window; her arms were killing her, but she had signed up for this and she wasn’t about to let these kids die because she was a bit uncomfortable. She looked back at the fight as she heard punches being thrown. The woman was attacking Sam, but Adam was running over. The woman quickly threw Adam at the wall before punching Sam in the jaw. Lily screamed, her concern for her brothers taking over. She had to save them, but there was still two more kids. Lily reached for the last little girl and struggled to lift her up to the window. The girl clumsily grabbed onto the edge, and Lily pushed her up the rest of the way by her legs. The girl crawled through to safety. 

Lily could see the woman flinging Sam from the corner of her eye, and Lily winced; it was three against one and her brothers were still losing. She saw Dean advancing on the changeling from behind, but she turned back around and decked him across the face multiple times. Lily gasped; she didn’t know what to do. She had to help her brothers, but Ben was still down here. She sighed and picked Ben up. She knew that Ben was more important right now; her brothers would be fine for a little while longer.

Ben didn’t want to go, yet, though.

“We’ve gotta help!” He exclaimed, struggling against Lily’s grasp.

“Ben, you’re eight, you can’t do anything!” She yelled at him, suddenly feeling like her brothers. Was this how they felt when she acted like that? But she was much older than Ben was, and Ben wasn’t trained at all for something like this - it was a very different situation. 

Ben relented and allowed Lily to pick him up. Lily sighed with relief, but began to struggle to lift him; she had to start lifting weights or something - kids were freakin’ heavy. She finally pushed Ben through the window and turned back to face the fight, her heart pumping, and her breathing uneven. 

“Go with them, Lils!” She heard Dean shout.

“Not without you guys!” Lily yelled back. She wouldn’t leave them - especially not Dean. If Dean died down here he’d be sent to Hell. How could she take that chance? Adrenaline pumping through her, she ran over to the fight. 

“Lils, you told him that you’d do everything that he says,” Adam spoke as he stood back up, still reeling from his rough landing. He was holding his shoulder in pain; he had landed on it when he’d fallen. 

Lily sighed, ready to argue, but she remembered what had happened last time she hadn’t listened to what they said while on a hunt - Tamara had ended up dead. Defeated, Lily quickly ran back to the window, hoping with everything that she had that her brothers could handle this. She knew that they could, but sometimes unexpected things happened, especially in their line of work. Spotting a bucket of something near the window, Lily picked it up and pushed it directly underneath the window; she wasn’t tall enough to pull herself up without it.

As she was about to pull herself through, she glanced back at her brothers, hesitating.. She didn’t want to leave them, but Tamara’s dead body flashed in her mind again and she knew that she had to make sure the kids were okay. She didn’t care if she herself was alright, the job was all about saving others. So how could she leave her brothers behind? She groaned, thoroughly conflicted, when she saw Sam use the torch on the changeling. Sighing, she knew they’d be fine, and she crawled through the window herself. It was a tighter squeeze, but she fit through it. 

The kids were standing about ten feet away, huddled in a group. Ben was at the head of the group, comforting the others. Lily found herself smiling as she jogged over to them; like father like son, she thought to herself.

“All right, we gotta get you guys somewhere safer,” Lily said to them, still slightly out of breath from all the lifting she had had to do. She eyed the Impala, wondering how many of the kids she could squeeze into there. She shrugged, some could sit on the floor, she thought to herself. Their safety was a lot more important than them being comfortable. “Okay, follow me.”

The kids followed her over to the car, and Lily pulled open the back door. “Get in,” She ordered, gesturing into the car.

One of the kids furrowed his eyebrows. “B-but there’s not enough room for all of us,” He said, softly. He was still shaken up. 

Lily rolled her eyes. “So? Get in,” She said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Or would you rather go back in the cages?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. It was obviously a completely empty threat, sort of meant as a joke, but their eyes all widened and one boy even began to cry. Lily sighed, mentally taking back what she had said about maybe being good with kids now - she was still horrible with them. 

“She’s just kidding, guys,” Ben said, trying to comfort the group. “Just go in; you’ll be safe.” 

Lily sighed. Ben was better with them than she was - again, like father like son. 

The kids did what Ben said and began to clamber into the back of the Impala. Lily fit six of the kids onto the back seat, and the other five fit on the floor. Lily shrugged, again. It worked. She had no idea how she and Adam were supposed to fit back there, too, though. 

Dean, Sam, and Adam exited the house a few minutes later, looking pretty beaten up - literally. Adam had a black eye and his busted up shoulder, Sam had a busted lip and a bruised jaw, and Dean had a bruised cheek. Lily was relieved when she saw them. She quickly ran over and hugged them each in turn, glad that they were safe. 

“Where’s the kids?” Adam asked her, glancing around the empty front lawn. 

Lily smirked. “I put them somewhere safe,” She said, leading them over to the Impala. She pointed to the back window. Furrowing their eyebrows, her brothers glanced into the backseat of the classic car and saw the kids smushed awkwardly together - practically sitting on top of one another. The trio turned back around and Lily laughed as they each gave her identical looks. She could read their expressions perfectly; those were their ‘Lily, what the Hell?’ looks. 

Hours later, as the sun began to rise, almost all of the kids were returned to their homes. All except for one: Ben. 

The Impala pulled up in front of Lisa and Ben’s house and Lily still couldn’t believe how nice these houses were; these kids were living in paradise, it seemed. Lily would kill to live in one of these fancy, gated neighborhoods. These kids had it all - loving mothers, a good and stable home, and they were freakin’ rich. Lily couldn’t help but be jealous of them. It felt ridiculous, though, to feel so jealous of a child, but Lily couldn’t help it; those kids had everything that Lily had always wanted.

Dean and Ben got out of the car, but Sam, Adam, and Lily stayed behind, knowing that Dean would want some alone time with Lisa. 

“Ben? Ben!” Lisa yelled, running out of her house and scooping her son - her and  _ Dean’s _ son, Lily reminded herself, off the ground and into a tight hug. “Baby, are you okay?” 

“I’m okay, Mom,” Ben promised her. Damn, it was still a mystery to Lily how that kid could be so strong. She admired the kid for it, that was for sure. Lily herself always struggled to be strong enough, and Ben was doing it with seemingly no problem. 

Lisa and Dean spoke for a moment, Lisa looking very close to tears, before she enveloped him in a tight hug. She released him, gesturing him to follow her as she and Ben headed into the house. Lily smiled; hopefully Dean, and herself and their two other brothers, would be staying here. Hopefully Dean’ll get the chance to know his son before he - 

Lily cut her own thoughts off, not wanting to think about the inevitable, but it was too late. Now all she could think about, again, was Dean’s deal. Ben would never get the chance to truly know his own father.

“Lils,” She heard Adam say from her left. She pulled from her thoughts and turned to him, glad that he was talking to her again. “You alright?” He asked, his eyebrows furrowed, forming his classic worried expression.

Lily nodded, but she knew that was a lie. She may have been trying to handle it, but she wasn’t okay - not with anything. “Are you?” She asked him, hoping he’d open up to her. Adam didn’t reply, and Lily knew that that meant he wasn’t. She nodded, glad that he was sort of telling her the truth. She grasped his hand in her own, knowing that she needed to be there for him when he needed to talk. She felt like a hypocrite, however, for refusing to talk to him. She wasn’t even going to apologize for the drinking; she just couldn’t. She knew deep down that, if she had a chance to redo it, she would still drink again in a heartbeat. It had made her feel so much better; how could she pass that up?

Lily felt like it was easier if she didn’t share too much anymore. She didn’t want to burden her brother with her thoughts, especially now with how guilty she felt about everything and with how negative her thoughts were. Lily knew that she didn’t deserve to be comforted about Tamara’s death; it had been _her_ _fault_. She deserved to feel guilty over it and, even though Dean’s deal wasn’t her fault, she deserved to feel guilty about that, too. Murderers deserved to suffer like she had been - _more_ than she had been.

 

 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! I finally have another chapter for you! Lily is upset, as usual, lmao. And she drinks alcohol without permission for the first time!! Uh oh. Lily’s headed down a dangerous path, and her feelings about Tamara and Dean’s deal are just making it all worse. Anyway, the scene with Lily and Dean at the playground is one of my favorites. Seeing Lily break down like that is heartbreaking, I think, and I’m super excited about that scene (no matter how horrible that sounds oops). Anyway, I hoped you enjoyed this chapter! The next chapter is going to be a funnier and more light-hearted one, I think (that could change as I’m writing it though), and it’ll be Lily’s birthday! Our girl is finally turning fourteen!  
> Also, I just wanted to say that Lily is definitely an unreliable narrator! You can clearly tell when she says that Ben is Dean’s son. Someone might wanna tell her that he actually isn’t lmao. But yeah, you 1000% cannot believe everything that Lily says. 
> 
>  
> 
> If you’d like to be updated on everything Lily then you can follow Lily’s tumblr brilliantlily . tumblr . com. It has posts that remind me of her, edits I and others have made, Lily’s playlist, a list of my other OCs, etc. Feel free to submit or ask me anything there - especially regarding this story as I check my tumblr much more often than here. This is not a spoiler-free blog, however! So, if you do not want to see spoilers then you probably shouldn’t follow it!! Just a warning. :)


	4. Chapter 3: Bad Day at Blackrock

The Impala rumbled down the highway, the darkness of the night outside reflecting the tense mood inside. Lily’s two eldest brothers had been arguing for awhile now and they didn’t seem like they would be stopping it anytime soon. Sam was yelling at Dean, Dean was yelling at Sam, Adam seemed just plain annoyed, and Lily, although she hated to admit it, agreed with Sam. 

Sam had been talking to a  _ demon _ , like, an actual demon, and Lily would usually be 1000% against the idea of working with one, but she had to agree with Sam that the pros outweighed the cons here. Ruby, the demon Sam had been talking to, said that she could help Dean, and, frankly, Lily knew that they couldn’t pass up help. She was getting more and more desperate with each passing day, and she knew that Sam was, too. If they didn’t find a way to get Dean out of this deal, he was gonna die. It was such a terrifying thought, but it was pretty much all she could think of anymore. 

“Because Demon, that’s why,” Dean was saying to Sam as he drove, only half paying attention to the road which put Lily on edge; her brothers had already been in a car accident once, before Dean had made the deal and before Sam and their father had died, when everything had seemed like it was gonna be okay. They didn’t need to be in another accident. “I mean the second you find out that this Ruby chick is a demon you go for the holy water! You don’t chat.” Lily had to admit that Dean had a point, but Sam had an even bigger one.

“No one was chatting, Dean,” Sam snapped. Lily could see his frustration clearly through the mirror. 

“Then why didn’t you send her ass back to Hell?” Dean asked, angrily, glancing at Sam for a moment. Lily was about to tell him to watch the road, but he turned back to face it quickly enough. She sighed, wanting their arguing to stop; was this how it was when  _ she _ argued with one of her brothers? Was it really this frustrating for the other two? Lily had been around some of her brothers arguments before, of course, but it had been awhile since the last one; it was usually Lily arguing with someone these days. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she was always so angry and emotional. In her defense, she did have the whole ‘my brother is going to die soon’ excuse at her disposal, but so did Sam and Adam. 

“Because -” Sam stopped himself for a second, hesitating. “Because she said that she might be able to help us out!” He exclaimed. 

“How?” Dean yelled.

There was a beat of silence in the car.

“Jesus,” Adam muttered from beside Lily, sounding just as sick of the arguing as she was, and it wasn’t like the two of them could just get up and leave either. They were trapped. “She said that she can help you get outta your deal.” Adam revealed, breaking the momentary silence in the impala.

Adam and Lily had been with Sam when Ruby had shown up in their motel room. They were with him when Ruby had told him everything, even about Sam and Dean’s mom and all of her friends. Ruby had seemed very convincing, but Lily knew that she could still be lying about helping Dean. She figured that that was a risk they could take - that they  _ had  _ to take. There seemed to be no other way to save Dean from his fiery fate.  

“What is wrong with you guys, huh?” Dean asked, incredulously. “She’s lying! You’ve gotta know that!” 

“Yeah, she could be lying, but, Dean, she could be telling the truth!” Lily exclaimed, finally jumping into the conversation. “We  _ need  _ to get you outta that deal, no matter who we get help from.” Lily was getting desperate at this point, and they still had a few more months to go.

Dean looked back at her through the rearview mirror, and Lily could clearly see the frustration in his eyes. “No, you don’t,” He said, looking back at the road. His voice sounded grim. “You need to let it happen, otherwise Sam dies.” 

Lily felt her stomach drop at his words. “How could you say that?” She asked, her voice sounding too emotional for her liking. “How are we expected to just sit back and watch our big brother  _ die _ ?” She asked, catching Dean’s eyes in the rearview mirror, again. In that moment Lily could tell that Dean didn’t want to die, but he knew that he had to. It broke her heart. Dean didn’t deserve this. None of them did.

“If we have the chance to save you, we’re gonna do it, Dean,” Adam spoke up, agreeing with his sister. 

Tensions already running high, Lily’s slight annoyance quickly heightened at this. “So,  _ now _ you care about him and his deal?” Lily snapped at her brother, quickly. She knew this wasn’t the right time or place to be doing this, and maybe she shouldn’t be doing it at all, but Lily had just lashed out at him without really thinking it through. She’d noticed that she’d been doing that a lot more recently.

Adam furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, sending her a questioning look. “The hell do you mean ‘now’?” He asked. “I’ve always cared about the deal and everything. How couldn’t I? Dean’s my brother.” 

“Really?” Lily asked, her frustration rising quickly. She could practically feel her blood boiling beneath her skin. “You’ve been pretending like it hasn’t been happening!” She yelled at him. Her fingernails began to pierce her palms as her anger grew, but Lily barely registered the sharp pain it was causing. “You haven’t cried, you haven’t yelled, you haven’t researched ways to stop it, you haven’t done  _ anything _ . So  _ sorry _ if it seemed like you didn’t give a damn.” 

“I don’t wear my fucking emotions on my sleeves, but I do care!” Adam yelled back, his own frustrations clearly getting the better of him. “I’ve been dealing with it!” 

“Alright, you two, stop it,” Lily heard Dean order from the front seat, but she didn’t pay attention to him, really. She was close to seeing red, her frustration over  _ everything _ just piling up, again. It wasn’t just Adam she was angry with (and, admittedly, she wasn’t that mad at him at all), it was just  _ everything _ : Dean’s deal, the fact that Sam had died in the first place, her killing Tamara. Lily was even still upset about their father’s death; it may have been over a year ago, but it was still affecting the young girl. She just wanted all this pain to stop. She just wanted everything to stop. 

“If you cared you would’ve tried to help him in some way! You wouldn’t have just sat there, doing nothing, pretending like everything's a-okay,” She spat, glaring at Adam, furiously. Her teeth were clenched, her fingernails were still digging into her palms, close to drawing blood, and her whole body had tensed up.”I stay up every night, researching ways to stop it!” She exclaimed, not even caring that she’d been keeping that a secret. “You’ve done nothing!” Lily paused, breathing heavily. “Why do you have to hide everything, anyway? You never used to hide your emotions and stuff from me and now you don’t talk to me about anything anymore. At least not recently.” 

“Sorry I don’t want to share my feelings like some little girl,” Adam spat back. “And fine. You want me not to hide anything? Then I’ll just tell Sam and Dean what you got up to at school.”

Lily’s jaw dropped. “You wouldn’t.” He  _ wouldn’t.  _ Right?

It was too late. He basically already had.

“Wait, what?” Sam asked, turning around to face his two younger siblings, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“What the hell did you do at school, Lily?” Dean asked sternly, looking at his little sister through the rearview mirror. He was using his parenting voice again, the one that made Lily feel like a kid who had just gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Lily felt trapped; she couldn’t get out of the car, so she couldn’t leave the situation. Being stuck like this did not sit well with her. She felt the sudden urge to punch something, or, specifically,  _ someone _ , but she resisted it. That would take things from bad to worse.

She glared at Adam; was he seriously so angry that he would tell on her? She guessed so, considering he basically already had.  _ That asshole. _ She couldn’t believe it. Sure, Lily had been the one to start their argument,  _ again _ , but she hadn’t expected it to get this heated (especially this quickly) or for him to go blabbing out all her secrets. 

Well, two could play at that game.

“Adam skipped school to go  _ ‘hang out’ _ with some girl last month,” Lily tattled, childishly, putting air quotes around the words ‘hang out’. Adam, thankfully, had spared her the details, but he had told her that he’d hung out with her, and Lily could piece together the puzzle quickly enough.. 

Sam and Dean shared a glance, both seeming like they didn’t know what to do with that information.

“Lily skipped school to get drunk,” Adam himself tattled, spilling Lily’s secret. She had expected as much, though, so she wasn’t surprised, just angry. He would regret starting this - boy, did she have dirt on him. She knew practically everything about him, after all. 

“Adam’s been stealing your alcohol for years!” Lily yelled. “And dad’s, before he died.” 

“Guys, stop it!” Sam yelled, ending the childish charades between the two youngest Winchesters. Silence immediately replaced all the yelling, and Lily was almost sure that Dean was going to threaten to turn the car around using his ‘father voice’ again. It would be sort of humorous considering they didn’t have anywhere to turn back to.

A cell phone ringing broke the silence. 

Sam pulled his phone out from his jacket pocket, using the passing street lamps to see. “It’s not mine.”

Dean patted his pockets as he drove, probably feeling for a vibration. “Me neither.”

Lily pulled her own phone out, but hers wasn’t ringing either. “It’s not mine, either,” She spat, still feeling frustrated. As she put her phone back in her pocket, she noticed the blood that had collected on her palms. Pulling her sweatshirt sleeve over her right hand, she wiped the blood off her left hand, before switching hands and repeating the process. She had four small, curved cuts on each her palms in the shape of her fingernails, but they weren’t deep enough to raise concern. Lily was used to seeing injuries fifty times worse when her brothers and father had come back from hunts. 

“Not mine,” Adam said, after pulling his own phone out.

Lily’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion; whose phone was it, then? 

“Check the glove department - it’s dad’s,” Dean said, pointing to the glove department that sat in front of Sam. 

“Dad’s?” The three younger Winchesters asked in unison, matching looks of surprise on their faces. 

“Yeah, I keep it charged up in case any of his old contacts call,” Dean explained, glancing between the road and the glove compartment.

Lily heard the glove department open, the ringing of the cell phone becoming less muffled. Sam flipped it open and answered it, sounding uncertain.

“Hello? Yes, this is Edgar Casey.” Lily scrunched up her nose as she heard the alias. Edgar was a gross name. “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t call the police; I’ll handle this myself.” 

Despite the fight the two had just been in,  _ again _ , Lily and Adam shared confused looks, both wishing that they could hear the other side of that phone call. 

“Thanks. You know, could you just lock it back up for me?” Sam asked whoever was on the other side of the phone. “Great.” There was a beat of silence. “Oh, I don’t have my book in front of me,” Sam spoke, motioning for a pen. Lily began to dig in her backpack that laid at her feet, but Dean pulled a pen out from his jacket faster than she could. He handed it to Sam, and Lily zipped her backpack closed again.

“Could you give me the address? Go ahead.” Sam began to scrawl the address down onto his palm, holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear. “Thanks a lot.” He snapped the cell phone shut.

There was a beat of silence again.

“Well?” Adam asked, sounding just as curious as Lily felt.

“Did dad ever tell you guys that he kept a container at a storage place?” Sam asked, sounding surprised. 

“What?” The other three siblings asked, again in unison. 

“In Buffalo?” 

“Ew, why Buffalo?” Lily asked, scrunching up her nose at the name of the city. She had only been there once, but she hadn’t enjoyed it too much. It was too snowy for her liking. She’d rather be in a more southern city, though she did love to see the changing leaf colors in the fall. 

Sam shrugged. “I’m not sure, but someone just broke into it.” 

“Lemme guess, we’re spending my birthday in Buffalo?” She asked, dryly. She was turning fourteen in less than four hours and the quartet of siblings had been planning on going to a waterpark, per Lily’s request; she had always wanted to go to one, but she guessed she wouldn’t be getting that chance anytime soon. 

“Yeah, sorry Lils,” Sam said, apologetically. “We can still do something fun, alright?” 

“And then after your birthday we can talk about you ditching school to get drunk,” Dean added in, in mock-excitement. 

“I wasn’t  _ drunk _ ,” Lily defended herself. 

“You were drunk,” Adam butted in, matter-of-factly.

“Shut up, Adam.” She glared at him, feeling exasperated and just very overwhelmed with  _ everything _ that was going on. It felt like she was handling all of this the worst; why was she so weak? Yeah, she’d been dealing with it all, but maybe she had been dealing with it  _ too _ much? If that made any sense. Adam and Dean hadn’t been showing much concern about the deal, both pretending like it wasn’t actually happening, but Lily had been angrier than usual and far more upset than usual and lashing out on others  _ much more  _ than usual. Why was  _ she _ so emotional? Was it because she was a girl, or was it just because she was inferior to all of her siblings? Lily didn’t know and she knew that she was never going to get a real answer. 

That night, after the four Winchesters arrived in Buffalo, Lily found herself tossing and turning in her sleep, but not really for her usual reasons. Glancing at the clock on the bedside table, the bright, red numbers glaring back at her, she sucked in a sharp breath.

She was turning fourteen in two minutes. 

Her birthday always made her a bit upset, considering she never got to spend it the way she really wanted to: with her family -  _ all _ of her family. It was completely impossible to celebrate it with everyone, though, considering her parents were dead. 

Sometimes, at random moments, Lily would remember that she’s an actual orphan. Both of her parents had bitten the dust, and that realization always hit the young girl like a punch to the stomach, knocking all the wind out of her. An  _ orphan _ \- like Annie or whatever (she’d never actually seen Annie before, but she knew the concept). It was scary to think about, and sad, and frustrating. She had always fantasized about being a normal kid and having a normal life and just being completely and utterly  _ normal _ . But Lily had gotten a rotten hand in life, and now she was a hunter, an orphan, and a teenage girl with advanced fighting skills and perfect aim. Nothing like Annie, really. 

Lily turned onto her side, again, to check the clock.

11:59.

She shut her eyes, not wanting the time to come. 

This would be her very last birthday with her eldest brother alive.

Without meaning to, Lily let a tear slip out of the corner of her eye. It traveled down the side of her face and onto her pillow, absorbing into the fabric. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t face this day knowing that it’d be the last one with her brother there. Lily knew that Sam, Dean, and Adam would all be thinking about it, too. 

None of this was fair.

She couldn’t look back at the clock, knowing that it probably read 12:00 by now. Instead, the now fourteen-year-old stared up at the ceiling until she felt herself drifting off into a restless slumber, wishing and praying that she could somehow save her brother. 

“Lils, get up,” A deep voice said from above her, but it was muffled and Lily couldn’t tell who it was that was speaking. Groggy and still more than half asleep, Lily pulled a pillow over her head, trying to shut out the world - a.k.a her brothers. She didn’t know what time it was or how long she’d slept for. All she knew was that she hadn’t been awoken by a nightmare for the first time in forever; she wanted to savor it. 

“Come on, birthday girl, get up.” That was Sam’s voice, Lily recognized now that she wasn’t 90% asleep. Letting out a tired groan, Lily pulled  _ another _ pillow over her head. Satisfied that even if her brothers kept talking she’d be able to get back to sleep, Lily relaxed.

That had been a bad move.

Suddenly, Lily felt her cocoon of blankets being ripped off of her and she instantly began to shiver. The freezing air hit her body in a wave, forming goose bumps on her skin. It felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water onto her, which she wouldn’t put it past her brothers to actually do to her on a normal day. Lily quickly curled herself into a ball, cuddling her bare legs to her chest to try and retain her remaining warmth. She heard someone sigh from her right, but she wasn’t paying enough attention to tell who it was; she just wanted a few more hours of sleep. If she could trade her brothers in and get new ones, Lily would in a heartbeat - at least for right now, anyway.

“Come on, Lily, this is your last chance to get up.” That was Dean’s voice, though muffled from her pillow barrier, it was still pretty obvious. Lily ignored him, trying to will herself to fall back asleep. 

Another bad move on her part.

One second she had been on her bed - albeit feeling like she had been dipped into a bucket of cold water, trying to sleep and the next she was on the floor of the motel room. Her side ached from the rough landing and Lily quickly sat up. Standing around her bed, her three brothers were looking down at her and laughing.  _ Those assholes. _ But while Sam had at least had the decency to hide his laughter, Adam and Dean were laughing at her freely with no remorse. She was going to  _ kill _ them; she didn’t care if she ended up in jail or juvie or whatever, she was going to make them pay for interrupting her sleep. 

“What the hell, guys?” Lily snapped, stumbling to her feet. “Did you seriously just push me out of bed?” Her tone shifted from anger to a slight whine. Shivering, she tried to wipe the sleep from her eyes. She wasn’t as tired as she had been a few minutes prior. Turns out that being literally shoved out of bed and landing roughly on the floor did wonders in waking a person up. 

“Sorry, Lils,” Sam spoke, the grin not falling from his face. “You wouldn’t get up.”  It was obvious to everyone that Sam was not the least bit sorry, neither were Adam or Dean. Typical. 

“Come on, birthday girl, we’ve got a gift for you,” Dean said, leading her to their motel’s table by her hand. He sat her down in one of the chairs and Lily winced slightly as her bare legs met the cold, wooden surface. Her pajama shorts left most of her legs completely bare, which may not have been the best move in New York during October.

Dean handed her a poorly-wrapped gift. Instead of wrapping paper her brothers had used old newspapers, and instead of regular tape they had used duct tape. The package itself was also an odd shape, but she couldn’t make out what the present inside of it was. Dean had wrapped it, probably. She smiled at the failed attempt to make it look presentable, knowing that it was wrapped with love, at the very least. She looked up at them, making eye contact with Sam and Dean, but purposely ignoring Adam. She wasn’t sure where they stood, after their argument last night. Though the two siblings had been having lots of arguments recently, but they always made up quickly.

Lily looked back down at the crumpled package in her hands and began to rip the newspaper off. The duct tape was making it particularly difficult, and Lily quickly got her pocket knife off the table beside her and flipped it open. Seconds later she was ripping the final piece of newspaper off, grinning as she realized what it was.

A gun.

Lily turned the gun over in her hands, instantly recognizing it as a .45 caliber handgun. It was an off-white color, the exact opposite of every gun that Lily had ever used, and the sides of it were engraved with simple leaf designs. Lily could make out the word ‘Colt’ etched on one of the sides. It was a truly beautiful gun, and Lily couldn’t wait to try it out. She looked back up at her brothers, her grin never leaving her face. Did this mean that they would be letting her join in on hunts more? It would be cruel to give her a gun but not let her hunt. 

“I love it,” She said, still grinning from ear to ear. “I mean, I’ve  _ never _ seen a hunter use a gun like this, but it’s great.” She got up off her chair and pulled Dean into a hug, then Sam, but she hesitated when she turned to Adam. Should she hug him, too? Adam made the decision for her, however, when he pulled his little sister into a hug. Lily smiled as she returned the hug, but she was still somewhat frustrated with him. She sighed, wishing she and Adam could go back to normal. They had been arguing so often recently, it was so unlike them.

They released their hug and Lily grinned as she looked at the gun again -  _ her _ gun. It was all her own and she couldn’t help but be excited about it. 

Then it hit her all over again that Dean was going to die.

Her smile dropped instantly, and she made eye contact with her eldest brother. There must’ve been a certain sadness or hopelessness in her eyes as Dean sobered up as well, seemingly understanding what was going through her mind. Lily quickly pulled him in for another hug, wrapping her arms around his torso and savoring the feeling of his arms wrapped around her. She savored the scent of his after shave and dollar store soap. She savored all of him, hoping that she’d never forget what he felt like, or what he smelled like, or how his voice sounded, or how his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled or laughed.

She released the hug a few moments later, trying to pretend like she hadn’t been on the verge of tears. Her eyes dropped to her feet, trying to push the negative thoughts from her mind - like usual. It seemed all she ever did anymore was think about his damn deal. She wished she could take her mind off it for more than five minutes at a time. Hopefully her birthday could help distract her from those thoughts, but so far it wasn’t doing a very good job.

Lily looked back down at her new gun, tracing the intricate design on the side with her finger. It wasn’t as exciting as it had been a few seconds prior. What did it matter that she had her own gun when Dean was going to die? None of it mattered, really, and she realized that she needed to stop arguing with Adam - he could end up dying, too. 

“How ‘bout we go get breakfast then?” Sam suggested, obviously trying to lighten the mood back up. “I’m sure they have chocolate chip pancakes,” He added in, knowing how much his sister enjoyed them.

Lily mustered up a smile, but even she could tell that it didn’t reach her eyes.. “Yeah, that sounds great.” 

After breakfast, where the diner did, in fact, have chocolate chip pancakes, the four siblings were in the elevator heading down to their dad’s storage unit. Lily wasn’t sure what exactly they were going to find, but she figured there were important hunting items in there. The elevator doors opened to reveal a dark and musty hallway where the storage units were. Lily sighed; this was definitely not as fun as the waterpark was gonna be. 

Dean unlocked the door to the storage unit while Sam and Adam shined their flashlights onto it. Lily was pointing her own flashlight around the rest of the room, making sure that they were really, truly alone - sue her for being paranoid. Dean slid the door open and the four siblings entered the darkened storage area. 

There was junk cluttered everywhere, on every wall, and on every shelf. The open area by the entrance had a devil’s trap painted onto the floor, but there were bloody boot-prints going through it. The footprints lead back towards another section of the unit.

“No demons allowed,” Sam said. 

“Blood,” Adam spoke after he knelt to the ground beside the tracks. He had reached down and felt some of the blood in his fingers. Lily crinkled her nose in disgust, but let him continue. “Check this out,” He added, pointing to the wire that went from one wall to the other - a trip wire. Lily noticed Sam following the wire with his flashlight until it lead to a gun. When the trip wire was, well, tripped, the gun had went off. It was smart,  _ really _ smart - damn, their dad was good. Key word there being  _ was _ . She mentally sighed, trying to push those thoughts from her head.

“Whoever broke in here got attacked,” Sam noted.

Lily nodded. “What did they take, though?” It was a rhetorical question, but she did want an answer; she just knew that none of her brothers would be able to give her one. The thief must’ve taken  _ something _ , considering the bloody footprints lead to the back of the storage unit. If she had been shot coming in here she wouldn’t have left without whatever she’d come to steal.

“I got two sets of boot tracks here,” Dean said. He had crouched down next to Adam to inspect the footprints closer. “Looks like it was a two-man job. And our friend with the buckshot in him, looks like he kept on walking.”

“Probably only got hit in the shoulder,” Adam suggested as he and Dean stood back up. 

The four continued further into the unit, flashing their lights onto everything. Would it have killed dad to invest in a light for this place? They soon split up, as much as they could split up in the small storage area, and Lily noticed a pile of cardboard boxes off in the corner. Curiosity peaking, Lily headed over to them. 

“1995,” She heard Dean read. She looked back over to her eldest brother, wondering what he had found. Lily had been two in ‘95 . . . and her mom had still been alive. She tried to push those thoughts from her head,  _ again _ . She could barely go two minutes without thinking of something upsetting.

“No way!” Sam exclaimed, sounding somewhat excited. Lily raised her eyebrows, slightly amused with her brother. “That’s my division championship soccer trophy.” Sam took the trophy from Dean’s hands, examining it beneath his flashlight. “I can’t believe he kept this.” 

“You played soccer?” Lily asked from across the room. She hadn’t known that. What else about her brother’s lives did she not know?   
“Yeah, for a couple of years,” Sam replied, offhandedly, as he was still examining his trophy.

“He probably kept it ‘cause it was the closest you ever came to being a boy,” Dean spoke, jokingly, as he moved past Sam to look through other stuff.

Lily turned back to the boxes in front of her. There were about four or five stacked in a pile. There was writing on the box closest to her, so Lily bent down and rubbed the thick layer of dust off of it with her free hand. She wiped the dust that had stuck to her hand onto her jeans, not caring about getting them dirty. Lily’s eyes widened as she read the writing.

On the box, scrawled in her dad’s messy handwriting, was her name.

Lily practically threw her flashlight to the ground, not even registering it clattering on the floor and rolling a bit away. She was too curious about what was in the box to care. She ripped the first box open then stretched across the floor to reach for her abandoned flashlight that had rolled away. Once she had grabbed it, she pointed it into the box, revealing its contents.

There were  _ toys _ in there. Old, broken, and tattered toys, but still toys. Her eyebrows furrowed, Lily pulled a dusty, old barbie doll from the box. It was a barbie with brown hair and brown eyes, one that heavily contrasted to the stereotypical barbie that Lily knew. The barbie had random bald spots on her head and one of her painted-on eyes had chipped off. It was also only wearing a single shoe. The poor barbie looked as if it’d been through Hell.

Lily placed it carefully on the floor next to her, treating it as if it were made of glass. She dug through the box some more, still using only one hand. There were more toys in there, presumably from her childhood - from before her mom had been killed. Why hadn’t her dad given her these when she was a kid? All she had had to play with as a kid were mostly toy cars, army men, action figures, and a couple of beanie babies, if her memory was serving her correctly. But six-year-old Lily would’ve  _ killed  _ for a barbie or, even better, one of those Spice Girl dolls that all of her classmates seemed to have had, that they had teased her for not having. Why hadn’t her dad given her these toys? He had probably thought that they didn’t have enough room to be carrying them all around, which was fair enough (not that Lily had wanted to admit it), but he hadn’t given her any of them? Why? Annoyance flooded through her as she realized she’d never get an answer. It wasn’t like she could ask him.

She vaguely heard Dean talking about his sawed-off shotgun that he’d just found and Adam talking about his hockey trophy from the sixth grade, but Lily was too preoccupied to care. She did, however, notice when they entered the next section of the storage unit. Lily knew that they had to figure out what had been stolen, and by who, but she didn’t care. This was  _ her  _ stuff in here.  _ Her  _ stuff from before her mom had died. 

Lily could feel tears welling up in her eyes.  _ Damn it _ . She had promised herself that she would stop crying so much, but she’d failed. Again. Lily placed the doll back into the box and moved to the next one, opening it up as quickly as she could one-handed. 

There was a mini Belle dress from Beauty and the Beast. It was cheaply made, and there was a stain on it (maybe spaghetti? It looked like some sort of sauce), but the yellow dress was undeniably like the one from the cartoon. It was so small, small enough for a two or three year old, and Lily felt a tear roll down her cheek. She let the dress fall into her lap as she began to cry. These were items that her  _ mom _ had bought for her when she was little. It was the closest Lily had ever felt to her mother - the mother she had never gotten to know. She felt the loss heavily in her chest, and she just wanted to go back in time and get the chance to  _ see _ her, not even meet her, necessarily. But she’d never get that chance.

Composing herself, Lily brushed the tears from her now salty cheeks and set the Belle dress carefully back into the box. She dug around in it a bit more and pulled out a photo. The photo was obviously old. It was a polaroid, aged with a bit of yellow around the edges. In the picture there was a young woman. She had long, black hair that cascaded down her back, tanned skin (quite a bit darker than Lily’s was), and, from what little Lily could see in the picture, brown eyes. She had a toddler on her lap who looked quite like the woman did, but just much younger and paler. 

It was a picture of Lily and her mother.

And, just like that, the dam of tears broke, again. 

It was the first time Lily was seeing what her mother looked like, besides from her hazy memory of the woman’s death. Her father had always told her, when she had mustered up the bravery to ask about her mother, that he didn’t have any pictures of her. Why did he lie to her all these years? Despite her anger towards her father, Lily couldn’t help but smile through her tears; her mother had been beautiful. 

Lily continued to analyze the picture, but it was difficult to see through her blurry vision. She blinked the tears away, trying to get control of herself again, and looked back at the picture. There was a window behind them, but it was blocked by silver bars. They had lived in a bad neighborhood, Lily was guessing. She looked back into the box, noticing again how battered the toys were. They hadn’t had much money, she realized. They didn’t have a lot of money, but her mom had still gotten her toys, even if they weren’t new and perfect.

And there went the tears, again, but they hadn’t truly dissipated in the first place.

Lily cussed under her breath, roughly wiping the tears from her cheeks again, irritating her skin. She could feel her cheeks growing more itchy and red.

This is  _ definitely  _ not how she had expected her birthday to go. 

“Lily, are you okay?” Lily heard Dean ask as he went over to her. She saw Sam and Adam following behind him from her peripherals. Dean crouched down next to her, looking at the boxes and trying to figure out what was wrong.

“He had a  _ damn _ picture of her!” Lily exclaimed, trying not to sound as emotional and upset as she felt. “He had this friggin’ picture, and all this fuckin’ stuff, here this  _ whole _ time and he never told me!” More tears began to run down her cheeks and Lily just wanted to punch something. Not only was she angry with her dad, but she was also angry with herself for breaking down like this, again. Especially since she was breaking down over a pile of junk and a single picture. But it was a picture of her  _ mom _ , she reminded herself. She had a right to be pissed off and upset right now, but she was still angry with herself for it.

Lily felt Dean put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “What is this stuff?” Dean asked her, softly. 

She let out a small hiccup, involuntarily. “Stuff from before my mom was killed,” She explained, wiping a few more tears from her cheeks. “He had it all this whole damn time and he  _ never  _ gave any of it to me, he never told me about it or anything!” She threw her flashlight to the ground, again, and it was hard to miss the sound of the glass cracking. 

“Hey, hey, Lils, calm down,” She heard Dean murmur from beside her, but Lily was too frustrated, too upset, and just too  _ done _ with everything. She stood up, gave Dean the picture of her and her mom and walked towards one of the shorter shelves that was stacked with her dad’s junk. She let herself cry, facing away from her brothers; she was embarrassed. 

It felt like this place was just a junk yard for her dad, and that that picture was just  _ junk _ to him, though deep down she knew that probably wasn’t true. Her frustration peaking, Lily let out a yell and pushed the shelf over. Glass shattered, papers went flying, and some dark liquid broke free from its bottle and seeped beneath her shoes. 

That had felt good.

She could hear Adam try to say something to her, but she ignored him. 

Lily pushed another shelf over, needing a way to get her frustrations out. Breaking her dad’s things was more satisfying than Lily had thought it’d be. It felt like she was getting back at him, at least a little bit, which was helping to relieve her anger. She pushed a third shelf over then began to kick some of the objects that had fallen. She put everything she had into those kicks - thinking about her father, thinking about her mother’s death, thinking about her fights with Adam, thinking of Dean’s seemingly inevitable death, thinking of the way she had clung to Sam’s dead body and sobbed, and thinking of Tamara’s life leaving her eyes as Lily stabbed her. Lily soon stopped, feeling her anger dissipate. She collapsed to the floor and continued to cry, feeling just plain sad now. Well, more like devastated.  

She felt sort of ridiculous as well; none of her brothers had ever broken down like this and they had all been through some shit, too. Was she just being too emotional? Was she just being too girly, letting her emotions get the better of her? 

Lily continued to cry, pulling her knees up to her chest. She just wanted everything to be okay. She wanted her mom and dad to be alive, she wanted Dean to not be dying, and, despite how much Lily wanted to hunt, she found herself loaning to be normal. Normal teenage girls didn’t have problems like these. Normal teenage girls weren’t as hurt as she was. Normal teenage girls were happy. True happiness just seemed so foreign. 

Her brothers comforted her, each of them hugging her and telling her she was gonna be okay. Although they were making her feel a bit better, it was also just getting her angry. They were always the ones comforting  _ her _ . She needed it to be the other way for once. She needed them to  _ need her  _ the way that she needed them. Because if they didn’t need her like that then, well, what was she good for? She couldn’t hunt like them, she couldn’t fight like them, she couldn’t do  _ anything _ better than any of her brothers could. She wasn’t smart, she wasn’t funny, she wasn’t  _ anything _ . Her brothers never needed her and it just made her feel so useless, like she was holding them back or dragging them down.

The quartet left the storage unit half an hour later, Lily still wiping away some stray tears. She tried to pretend like her breakdown hadn’t happened, and she was grateful that her brothers were doing the same. 

Sam filled her in about the missing box from dad’s storage unit while they drove. Lily wasn’t sure where they were driving, but she wasn’t in the mood to question things. She spent most of the car ride staring out the window, watching the people blur past as they drove by. She wondered what their stories were, what kinds of people they all were. 

Sometimes, when she was really bored, Lily liked to make up a life story for people she passed by. It helped pass the time more quickly, and Lily liked to imagine how normal people lived; how their biggest problem could be forgetting to buy the onion dip for their barbecue, or maybe forgetting to buy a gift for their cousin’s baby shower. She liked to imagine how their lives were happy, how they would never feel as much sadness and loss as she had felt. 

Minutes later, the Impala rumbled to a stop outside a sketchy-looking apartment building and Dean leaned out the window, reading the license plate of the car parked next to them. 

“Connecticut,” He declared. “Last three digits 8-8-0.” 

“Yep, that’s it,” Sam replied.

Dean shook his head. “Should’ve blacked out their plates before they parked in front of a security camera,” He sang.

“We goin’ in then?” Adam asked, pulling his gun from the waistband of his jeans.

“Yep, let’s go.”

Lily followed her brothers out of the Impala, just waiting for one of them to say something to her. She pulled her new gun from the small of her back, holding it in front of her the precise way she’d been trained to. 

Dean sent her a look. 

“It’ll be four against two, you probably ain’t even gonna need me - and I’ll stay in the back!” Lily promised, her tone sounding a bit pleading. “Plus, it’s my birthday.” She sent Dean the puppy dog eyes, the ones she had learned from Sam all those years ago. 

“Stay behind us.” It was all that Dean said. Despite how crappy Lily had been feeling for most of the morning, she actually found herself with a smile on her face. She was torn between feeling upset and feeling somewhat content; she finally had a picture of her  _ mom _ , she’d gotten her own gun, Dean was letting her on another hunt,  _ and _ it was her birthday. Maybe it was just her lucky day. Well, besides the fact that she’d had  _ another _ breakdown, of course.

They approached the correct apartment and Lily went to town on the lock. It opened with a soft click seconds later and, true to her word, Lily let her brothers go inside first. She shut the door as quietly as she could, not wanting to tip off the men she could hear from the other room. From the sounds of it, there were only two of them. Four against two was hardly fair, but these guys had stolen from their father - who cared if it was fair?

“There’s no way in hell we are handing it over to that stuck-up bitch,” Lily heard one of the men say, his voice slightly muffled. She furrowed her eyebrows as she pushed herself against the wall next to Dean. Who were they talking about? 

Sam, Dean, and Adam continued to inch forward. Soon they popped into the living room, guns drawn and pointed at the men. 

“Freeze!” They shouted, moving in farther. “Nobody move!” 

Wishing she could’ve have a shot of tequila or  _ something  _ before this to loosen her up a little, Lily followed them in, pointing her own gun at the balding man that Sam was pointing his at, too. 

The apartment was shabby and small. There were papers and beer bottles randomly cluttered on the floor and, damn, would it kill them to get a vacuum cleaner? Not that Lily was the poster child for being neat and tidy (she was the opposite of that, really), but she wasn’t this bad.

“Give us the box,” Dean ordered, getting straight down to business. “And  _ please  _ tell me that you didn’t -”

“Oh, they did,” Adam, who was standing on Dean’s side of the room, said, looking down at the coffee table which held the opened box. Lily rolled her eyes. People were dumb.

“You idiots,” She snarled. “It coulda killed you!”

“What the - ?” One of the guys was saying, just now noticing Lily. Lily cut him some slack for that one; it wasn’t everyday you saw a teenage girl holding a gun to your head. 

“You opened it?” Dean practically roared, his free hand reaching out to shove one of the men against the opposite wall. It always amazed Lily how her brothers could go from her big brothers that gently wiped her tears off her cheeks to these intimidating hunters who could kick anyone’s ass. 

“Are you guys cops?” The guy who was pinned yelled. Lily furrowed her eyebrows. She was a fourteen-year-old, how would she be a cop? People were really dumb.

“What was in the box?” Dean asked, his gun pointed to the bald guy’s heart. Lily and Sam were pointing their guns at the second man, who had backed up towards the window. Both of the men were wearing dirty clothing, but the one that Dean was currently threatening was clearly the one that had been shot. His white t-shirt was splattered with scarlet red blood, particularly on his right shoulder. Adam had been right about that one.

The guy didn’t answer, he just looked past Dean and to the coffee table. Lily didn’t look back, knowing that at least two of them should still be watching the guys. This could’ve been a way to distract them so they could get away. 

“Oh, is that it, huh?” Dean asked him, turning back to face him while still digging his gun into the guy’s chest. “It is, isn’t it?” He turned back to the coffee table, again. Lily couldn’t see her brother’s face, but she figured he had furrowed his eyebrows. “What is that thing?” He sounded confused.

And it was at that precise moment that the guy shoved Dean’s arms. Dean dropped his gun and it went off, the bullet ricocheting off of several different walls and pieces of furniture before hitting Sam’s own gun. It slipped from his hands as Sam gave a yelp, the gun going off as it landed on the floor. The bullet hit the lamp on the other side of the room, shattering it. Lily heard Adam’s gun click - he didn’t have any bullets.  _ How could he just not have bullets? _ Lily shot her own gun off at the man, but her bullet landed inches away from his leg. 

Her jaw literally dropped. She had  _ missed. _ She hadn’t missed a shot in years, not since she had still been training when she was younger. Lily was almost always a perfect shot, but if not then she usually still hit around the center of the target. But now, when it was actually important, she had  _ missed _ . She could practically hear her father’s gruff voice in her head telling her to get it together, that she couldn’t afford to be off her game.

What the hell was going on. Were they  _ all _ off their games?

Lily shot at the man again, but she missed again. The bullet instead hit the wall next to him, going through the drywall. Now she was just getting angry. She shot her gun twice more, but both shots still missed. 

She heard Sam rushing toward his gun on the ground, but the second man reached it first, shoving Sam away and into Dean. Sam crashed into Dean with a shout, causing Dean to go crashing into the coffee table. The table completely broke beneath Dean’s weight and he fell to the floor. His gun went flying, clattering to the floor a few feet away. 

Adam was in a fist fight with the balding man, considering his gun wasn’t going to work, but he was obviously losing. The man flung Adam backward and he landed into a bookshelf. Collapsed onto the floor, Adam didn’t have enough time to move before the bookshelf fell on top of him. Thankfully, from what Lily could see, the bookshelf wasn’t very heavy. She went to help Dean up, as he was closest to her, when Sam got tackled, brought down to the floor as if they were playing football. 

While one of the men was on top of Sam, punching him over and over, the other had picked up an abandoned gun. Just as Dean had stood up, the man pulled the gun up, somehow smacking Dean in the face with it. Dean fell over, landing on the floor, again. 

Okay, now Lily was pissed.

Another bullet flew from her gun, but it missed  _ again _ , imbedding itself in wall behind the man. This was ridiculous. Aiming perfectly came almost as easily to Lily as breathing did, so what was happening?

Running out of ideas, Lily tried to punch the man’s gun from his hands, but she lost her balance and collapsed onto the floor. Groaning and feeling desperate, the girl crawled to the man’s feet, trying to trip him from the ground.  _ Something _ had to work against these guys. The man kicked Lily in the face and she felt her nose snap, hearing the resounding crack loud and clear. She screamed in pain and she could feel the blood begin to seep from her nose.

Okay, so that hadn’t been her best plan.

Blood now streaming down her face, Lily tried to get back up but the man kicked her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. She smacked her head against the floor as she fell back down and her vision blurred, her head feeling as if it had been cracked open. He kicked her gun out of her hand and it slid across the hardwood floors, way out of her reach.

Lily could see the blurry outline of the balding man choking Sam and she panicked. She tried to get up, or to at least crawl, but her head just felt so  _ heavy _ . She couldn’t let Sam just die, but she couldn’t move. She looked to Dean, but he was still reeling from his own fall. Lily was pretty sure that Adam had been knocked out, but she wasn’t positive.

Struggling against his attacker, Sam began to reach his arm out for some object that lay a few feet away from him. Lily couldn’t tell what it was (it definitely didn’t look like a gun), but if it helped save him then Lily wouldn’t question it. Mustering up all the strength that she could, Lily slid her leg across the floor and weakly kicked the object (which was surprisingly soft beneath her boot) towards Sam. It was a good enough kick, however, as Sam was able to reach whatever it was. He picked it up, quickly, and it seemed as if he had suddenly found the strength to break free.

He kicked the man backwards and he flew practically to the other side of the room, hitting his head against the wall.

“Dean,” Sam said, as he noticed his brother clambering to his feet. “I got it.”

“No you don’t.” It was the man who had broken Lily’s nose. He was pointing a gun at her brother. Silently, Lily urged Sam to beat his ass, considering she couldn’t do it herself at the moment. 

The man pulled the trigger, but the gun just clicked. He cocked the gun and tried it again, but it was jammed. “Damn it.” Sam moved forward, forcing the man to take a step backward, but Sam hadn’t even had to do anything as the man tripped over the broken coffee table. He fell over the couch and hit his head on the floor, knocking himself out. There was a beat of silence. 

What the hell was going on?

“Sam!” Dean yelled. Lily couldn’t see what was happening over the couch, but her brothers were looking in the direction of the other man, the one that Sam had shoved into the wall. She couldn’t see it for herself, but she sure as hell heard the sound of another bookshelf collapsing on the guy’s head. Lily also hadn’t seen the guy’s gun fly from his hands, but she did see Sam catch it from the complete opposite side of the living room.

Although everything was sort of hazy and blurry, Lily knew that that couldn’t be possible.

For the second time in the past three minutes, Lily’s jaw dropped.  _ What the hell was going on? _

“That’s a lucky break,” Dean spoke, just as confused as surprised as she was. “Is that a rabbit’s foot?”

Sam looked down at the small, grey object in his hands, finally getting the chance to look at it closely. “Yeah,” He said, his eyebrows furrowed. “I think it is.”

“Wasn’t so lucky for me,” Lily groaned from the floor, her voice sounding thick from the blood that was still seeping from her nose. Some of it was leaking to her throat and mouth, but she couldn’t even be bothered to try to stop it; she just felt too dizzy and woozy to move. She figured that she could have a concussion - she knew the symptoms well enough from her years of experience in a hunter family.

Dean rushed to Lily’s side, helping her sit up. She grasped her head in pain, the sudden movement making her feel even more dizzy. And then a wave of nausea hit her. Praying to God that she wouldn’t puke, Lily closed her eyes and tried to steady herself. 

“Um, Adam’s kinda dead under that bookshelf,” She muttered, her eyes still closed. She needed them to go check on Adam, too. The bookshelf had looked light, but her brother had still bumped his head against the floor - hard enough to knock him out, anyway. 

Half an hour later they were back in their motel room. Sam had broken Lily’s nose back into place, which was about as pleasant as it sounded. She had screamed so loud she figured that someone in a nearby room would complain, but, thankfully, no one had come knocking on their door. Breaking her nose back into place had seemed like it’d hurt more than breaking it originally had. Maybe it was because she had been mentally preparing herself for Sam to snap it back to its original place, but when that man had kicked her she hadn’t been expecting it. 

Both times had still hurt like a bitch, though. 

Hours later, after Adam had woken up and had been deemed okay, the siblings decided to head to a diner for lunch. It seemed like a weird thing to do after getting your asses kicked, but that was the life of a Winchester, Lily supposed. Her nose and head still hurt like hell, but she was hungry. Hunger won out over her protesting body. Lily figured that Adam felt the same way, considering he had a large bump on the side of his head and bruises scattered in random places from when the shelf had fallen on top of him. None of her siblings could beat the gigantic bruise that Lily had on her stomach from when the man had kicked her; it was different shades of blue, with a bit of yellow mixed in as well. It stretched from one side of her stomach to the other, going over her belly button, but it was much longer than it was wide. It ached even at the slightest touch, and Lily was sure that there was a slight boot imprint on her skin. 

Dean stopped at a convenience store, not telling any of his siblings what he was going in to buy. He was acting pretty excited for a guy who had just gotten beaten up alongside his younger siblings. 

He came back out a few minutes later, holding a small paper bag, a grin etched on his face. He sat back in the driver’s seat and opened up the bag. Lily sat on the edge of her seat and looked over Dean’s shoulder to see what he had bought. 

Lottery tickets.

Her brother was an absolute genius. 

Lily grinned, but a sharp pain in her nose made her quickly drop it. It was still throbbing and the last time she had looked in the mirror it had begun bruising and swelling, turning her nose and the underneath of her eyes a dark shade of purple. She looked absolutely ridiculous.

“I can’t find anything on it in dad’s journal,” Sam announced, not even looking up from the leather-bound notebook. 

Dean held up the lottery tickets to Sam. 

Adam, who was sitting in the other back window seat, saw the tickets and laughed. “Dean, you’re a genius,” He exclaimed, voicing Lily’s own thoughts. “If the foot’s really making Sam lucky then we’re ‘bouta be rich.”

“Hell yeah, we are,” Dean agreed, grinning at his little brother.

“Dean, come on,” Sam complained. 

“Sam, it’s a great idea,” Lily piped up from the back. She had sat back down in her seat properly; she didn’t need her ass to be uncomfortable, too. “Maybe this birthday isn’t goin’ too bad, after all,” She remarked, smiling just a little. She was about to be  _ rich _ , after all.

Adam sent her a look, his eyebrows furrowed. “Dude, your nose is the same color as fuckin’ Barney,” He said. “And a bookshelf fell on me.” 

Lily shrugged. “If we get rich then it was all worth it.” 

“Speak for yourself,” Adam grumbled, rubbing at his lower back. 

“Who says the foot is even lucky?” Sam asked, raising his eyebrows at them through the mirror.

“Sam, that was  _ my _ gun he was aiming at your head. And my gun don’t jam - that was a lucky break,” Dean explained. “Not to mention them taking  _ themselves _ out - also a lucky break.” He handed Sam one of the scratch-offs he’d bought. “Here, scratch this.”

Sam didn’t move.

“Come on, Sam.”

Sam begrudgingly took the ticket and Lily found herself smiling again, despite the pain it caused her nose still. They were gonna be  _ rich _ . She could probably buy herself a new nose after this. 

Dean threw a penny at Sam to scratch it with.  
“Dean, it’s gotta be cursed somehow,” Sam spoke as he scratched, revealing the numbers that were hidden underneath. “Otherwise dad wouldn’a locked it up.” When he had finished scratching he handed the card back to Dean.

Lily had to resist the urge to rip the card from her brother’s hands and see it herself.

“1200 dollars,” Dean said, sounding shocked. “We just won 1200 dollars.”

And, for the third time that day, Lily’s jaw dropped. 

Adam and Dean instantly began to cheer, encouraging Sam to scratch more of them. Lily grinned and she didn’t even care that her nose was protesting with pain;  _ they were gonna be rich after this.  _

“Doesn’t seem that cursed to me.”

Sam decided to call Bobby about this, which Lily figured was a smart idea. Dad wouldn’t have stored that rabbit’s foot in a cursed box for no reason. Although, she, Dean, and Adam were really more concerned with the lottery tickets. They had them laid out on the hood of the Impala as they counted how much money they’d won already.  

While Sam was listening to Bobby on the phone, he bent down and picked something off the ground. He turned back around and lifted a gold watch up in the air. Lily hadn’t felt this excited in what felt like forever. They were gonna be  _ rich _ .

Dean was trying to add up all the amounts in his head, but he was having trouble and kept on starting over. Adam had taken out a sheet of paper and a pen and was trying to tally it all up on there. Lily, however, added up the total amount in her head without much of an issue.

“It’s fifteen thousand, three hundred dollars,” She stated, straightening one of the tickets that had been crooked. 

Lily missed the confused, yet pleasantly surprised, looks that Dean and Adam shared with each other behind her back. 

Once Sam’s phone call had ended, Dean held a few of the tickets up for him to see. “Dude, we’re up fifteen grand.” 

“Well, we’ve got bad news,” Sam replied, walking back to the Impala. “The foot is cursed. My luck is good until I lose the foot, then it turns bad and I end up dead.” 

Lily’s eyes widened at Sam’s announcement. She couldn’t have two dead brothers. She cared about all three of them so much, even if it didn’t seem like it at times, and she just couldn’t handle the idea of having ⅔ of them  _ dead.  _ She couldn’t lose them. Dealing with Dean’s impending death was bad enough, now Sam too? And Sam had only been brought back to life not that long ago. Lily also came to the realization that Dean’s deal would be for  _ nothing _ if Sam died. 

“What do we do?” Lily asked, quietly. She was still trying to digest the news. She had never been good with dealing with losing someone she loved; she always seemed to just handle it the worst. With their father’s death, she stopped talking for weeks on end. She hadn’t seen a point in doing anything. Sometimes it felt like she was still trying to digest  _ that _ , and it had been over a year ago. With everything else piled on top, Lily felt as if she were drowning. She was being pulled down by some invisible force and her lungs were bursting, needing air, but she couldn’t get to the surface; she couldn’t be relieved from all her pain. 

“Bobby’s gonna fix it, I promise,” Dean spoke, not only to Lily, but to all of them. There was a certain look in his eye that made Lily think he was trying to reassure himself as well. 

None of them would’ve died if they had just gone to the damn waterpark.

The quartet finally entered the diner twenty minutes later, and Lily’s stomach was rumbling. It’d been hours since she’d last eaten anything, and, man, did Lily like to eat. Lily followed her brothers inside, not paying much attention to their conversation. She was trying to think of ways to break Sam’s curse. Could burning the foot do anything? Or would that count as losing it? She hoped that Bobby would find something, because she had absolutely nothing. Though, in her defense, she had no books to look through and her phone didn’t have internet access. 

They reached the podium where the hostess, an old silver-haired man with a receding hairline, was standing. 

“Hi,” Sam greeted him. “Table for four, please.”

“Congratulations!” The man exclaimed, grinning at them. 

Lily raised an eyebrow, sharing a bewildered look with Adam. A bell rang out, loudly, catching the attention of everyone else in the diner. 

“You are the one millionth guest of the Biggerson’s restaurant family!” The man handed them a huge check - like, a physically gigantic check. It was probably taller than Lily if you turned it on its side. Sam, Dean, and even Adam, who was seemingly growing taller and taller every single day, were so tall that when they held the check at their chests it completely covered Lily’s face. Standing on her tippy-toes, Lily tried to see over the top of the check, but she was still too short.  

Lily took a step back just as balloons were released from the ceiling. She looked up, confused, as red and gold balloons and golden streamers floated down on top of them; had those been up there the whole time?  A few camera clicks and flashes later, she and her brothers were finally led to their booth; a check for free Biggerson’s food for life in their hands. 

Lily had to admit that the rabbit’s foot  _ was _ doing them some good, but none of it was going to matter if Sam died. The constant nervousness she had been feeling in the pit of her stomach had been doubled. What were they going to do?

Order ice cream, apparently. 

She, Dean, and Adam had each ordered an ice cream sundae - Lily’s sans cherries. Sam, however, was looking up lore on the rabbit’s foot on his laptop. Adam, who was sat beside Sam, was peering over Sam’s shoulder and dribbling vanilla ice cream down his chin. Lily hoped he dribbled some onto Sam’s laptop; that’d be a funny argument to see.

“Bobby’s right,” Sam was saying. “This lore goes way back - pure hoodoo.” He shut his laptop, nudging Adam and his vanilla-coated chin away from him. “You can’t just cut one off of any rabbit; it has to be in a cemetery, under a full moon, on Friday the 13th.”

“Damn,” Lily spoke up, in between bites of ice cream. “That’s really specific.” 

Dean set his empty bowl back down onto the table, the spoon clattering against the side of it. “I think from now on we only go to places with Biggerson’s,” He said, his mouth still full with his last bite of ice cream. 

Adam nodded in agreement, his own mouth too stuffed to say anything. 

“What does that have to do with the rabbit’s foot?” Lily asked, furrowing her eyebrows at her brother. She scooped another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “Oh, can we see it?” She asked, after swallowing. 

Sam rolled his eyes, but took the grey foot out from his pocket and held it out in his palm. 

“Wow, it’s literally a rabbit’s foot,” Lily remarked. “Poor bunny,” She added, frowning as she realized that a bunny either had to be killed for this or had to get its own foot cut off. Why did everything bad always happen to the rabbits?

“I think it’s cool,” Adam replied, setting his own bowl down. “Lemme see.” And, before anyone could stop him, Adam grabbed the foot from Sam’s hand.

“Adam, no!” Sam, Dean, and Lily all yelled out at the same. Adam dropped the foot onto the table like it had burned him, but it was too late. The damage was done.

“Adam!” 

Adam cursed beneath his breath. “I'm sorry!” He exclaimed, sounding truly apologetic. “I wasn’t thinking.”

He now had the good luck, while Sam's had gone rotten. Lily's heart began racing as she thought about Sam and now Adam dying; if Bobby didn't find a way to fix this soon they were screwed. The nervousness in her stomach had turned to full fledged anxiety, and her breathing began to quicken its pace. This couldn't be happening. It felt like the walls of the room were closing in. Tears welled up in the corner of Lily’s eyes as she struggled to breathe, just thinking of life without any of her brothers, which would be her harsh reality if they didn’t fix this soon. Lily didn't know what was happening, but she wanted it to stop. She just really wanted everything to stop.

Minutes later, after Bobby had been called again and Lily had begun to calm down, their waitress came over to the table. She was of average height, had short black hair that only fell to her chin, and blue eyes. She smiled at them as she approached, then leaned across the table slowly to grab their empty bowls of ice cream, her breasts slightly peeking out from beneath her low cut shirt. Lily didn’t know why, but she found herself staring at the woman’s chest along with her brothers. 

Once the waitress had walked off, after sending them all another smile, Lily furrowed her eyebrows in confusion; why had she been staring at the waitresses’ boobs? She couldn’t be . . . . Lily didn’t even want to think about that, especially not right now. Besides, that was impossible. She couldn’t be. 

Once the waitress had disappeared into the kitchen, the boys stopped ogling after her. Lily didn’t know how to feel right now. She was just so overwhelmed over everything and she had so much on her mind it was hard to focus on only one thing. Lost in her own thoughts, Lily missed it when Sam spilled his coffee all over himself. 

Lily couldn’t hide her small giggle as Sam jumped out of his seat, knocking over a tray that a waitress was carrying, plates and bowls crashing to the floor. Adam tried to leave the booth after him, but he tripped as he was standing up, falling onto the floor next to their table. Lily burst into laughter at this, although in the back of her mind she knew that was a really bad sign. Why did Adam have bad luck, too? 

Lily and Dean made eye contact, coming to the same conclusion; the damned waitress had stolen the rabbit’s foot. One minute Adam has good luck, then she comes over and Adam has bad luck - it wasn’t rocket science.  

“Son of a bitch,” Dean spoke, getting out of the booth as well. Lily followed after him and helped Adam to his feet. Adam slipped and went crashing to the floor again, but this time he pulled Lily down with him. 

She yelped as her heavily bruised stomach came in contact with the floor as she landed. Swearing beneath her breath, Lily pushed herself off the floor and clambered back to her feet, her bruises aching and throbbing more than they had already been. Maybe that had been karma for laughing at her brothers, but that didn’t mean she was okay with it. This time she left Adam on the floor, not trusting him and his newfound clumsiness. 

Her brothers clambered to their feet and the quartet of siblings ran from the restaurant in search of the black-haired waitress who had stolen the foot. Dean was up front, followed by Sam, then Adam, then Lily, so when Sam tripped over nothing and fell to the ground, Adam didn’t have time to stop himself or jump over his brother, so he tripped too. Though Lily, who didn’t have bad luck, was able to come to an abrupt stop before she tripped as well. Adam had fallen on top of Sam and the two siblings had identical groans of pain as they tried to get back up. 

Despite how serious this could turn out to be, Lily grinned. “Maybe this birthday hasn’t been so bad.” 

“Man, you two suck,” Dean said at the same time to their brothers, helping them both to their feet. Sam had cut both his knees open, but compared to Lily’s bruised-up face it was nothing. At least in her opinion, anyway. Adam came away mostly unscathed, probably because Sam had broken his fall.

“How bad is this damn luck gonna get?” Adam groaned, holding his stomach where Lily guessed he’d hit during the fall. 

Lily sobered up immediately, knowing the answer to that question. Neither Sam nor Dean answered their little brother’s question, mostly because they all already knew the answer. They needed to get the foot back to one of them, at the very least. Maybe her brothers could trade it off, keeping the good luck for long enough to ensure they weren't about to die, before handing it back to the other and suffering through the bad luck for a little while, but not long enough to die. It could work, Lily supposed, as long as Bobby or  _ someone  _ could come up with a solution quickly. Her idea wouldn't work forever, she knew that, but it would buy them some time.

She wasn’t going to sit around and let the rest of her family die. 

The siblings headed back to the apartment building of the two men who had originally stolen the foot. Apparently one of the guys died in an accident earlier that day, conveniently after he’d lost the foot. Despite the fact that the guy had been a greedy idiot, Lily knew that his death meant bad news for her brothers and for her. It meant that, once the foot was lost, your luck really did go so sour that you ended up dead. Lily had figured this already, but to actually see it in action had been worse, like it had just been in theory before but now it was real. 

Lily, her new gun at her side, followed Dean into the apartment, Sam and Adam following in behind. It was sort of ironic that, earlier that day, Lily had been the one in the back as she was the least experienced and the most likely to mess up and get herself hurt, but now Sam and Adam were officially lower on the totem pole than she was. It was sort of a nice feeling. It just felt nice to not be the worst hunter out of the four siblings for once. 

The surviving man of the duo was sitting in the apartment alone, drinking a bottle of some sort of alcohol. The lights were dimmed and there was soft Spanish music playing in the background, talking about God. Lily couldn’t help but feel bad for the man, despite the fact that he’d stolen from her father and his friend had broken her nose. He had just lost his roommate, and he’d been the one to find him dead, too. She could truly empathize with the man, having lost both of her parents, and she felt his sadness as soon as she stepped into the room.

“Oh, man,” The man groaned as he spotted the siblings. “What do you want?” 

“Heard about your friend,” Dean said, moving further into the apartment, his younger siblings on his tail. “It’s bad luck.”

“Piss off.”

Lily glowered at him, but she understood why he was angry with them. If she were him she’d be angry, too - hell, she was always angry anyway these days. 

“Look,” Lily spoke from beside Dean. “We know some woman hired you to steal the rabbit’s foot.” 

“Yeah? How do you know that?” The man asked.

“Because she just stole it back from  _ us _ ,” Dean replied.

The man began to laugh, hysterically, as if someone had just told the funniest joke in the world. Lily rolled her eyes, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. 

“Listen man,” Sam said from behind her and Dean. Lily could hear him walking forward, but he must’ve tripped over something as, seconds later, she heard crashing noises and yelps as he fell to the floor. She whipped around to see him laying on the floor next to a now broken lamp and a busted up radio. 

“Sam, this is like the seventh time you’ve fallen,” Lily said, trying to keep a straight face. In truth, this was sort of funny. “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah, I’m good,” Sam replied, groaning and sounding muffled.

Adam, who had been standing next to Sam, moved to go help him up. “Adam, don’t move,” Lily ordered, shooting him a stern look. “As funny as it’d be, we don’t need you falling, too.” It felt strange to be ordering around her brothers, considering that she was the youngest and that was how they treated  _ her _ . Oh how the tables have turned. 

Lily moved to help her brother up off the ground, but Sam moved one of his legs and she tripped over it, falling on top of Sam roughly. Both she and Sam groaned in pain; they had bumped heads as she landed. She was pretty sure she could hear Adam laughing in the background and she made a mental note to punch him for it when everything had gone back to normal. 

“Lils, you okay?” Dean asked, pausing from his talk with the man. 

“Just dying a little, no biggie.”

Lily clambered to her feet, leaving Sam to his own devices, and moved back to where Dean was standing. She rubbed the side of her head where her head and Sam’s had collided, wincing as she put pressure on it. 

“It wasn’t a freak accident that killed your partner,” Dean was saying when Lily tuned back into the conversation. 

“What?” The man asked, clearly confused. 

“It was the rabbit’s foot.”

The man scoffed. “You’re crazy, man.”

“You know I’m not. You saw what happened, what it did - all the flukes, all the luck. When you lose the foot that luck goes sour,” Dean explained. “ _ That’s _ what killed your friend.” He gestured back to Sam, who had made it back upright, and Adam. “And my brothers here are next, and who knows how many more innocent people after that. Now, if you don’t help us stop this thing then that puts those deaths on your head.” The man’s eyes widened at this. “Now, I can read people, and I get it. You’re a thief, and a scumbag. That’s fine, but you’re not a killer, are you?” Dean and the man stared at one another, neither one breaking eye contact. The man seemed to be mulling over what Dean had said. Eventually, he broke, spilling the name that they needed.

Dean was seriously impressive; he was so good with people and Lily couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous. Dean was so good at  _ everything _ , and Lily? All she was good at was messing things up.

The four of them left the apartment building soon after that. It had grown dark, and Lily’s birthday was soon going to come to a close. It hadn’t even really felt like her birthday, not really, and now it was almost over. Though, Sam and Dean didn’t really celebrate their own birthdays anymore, and they hadn’t really done much for Adam this year either. Lily figured that they had made a bigger deal of her birthday because she was still so young, because they wanted to give her some sense of normalcy. Normal teenage girls celebrated their birthdays, normal teenage girls went out to breakfast or lunch or dinner with their families, but normal teenage girls weren’t orphans who spent their birthdays getting beat up by the men who’d stolen from their father. Despite her brother’s (and even her own) attempts, Lily wasn’t a normal teenage girl and she never would be - no matter how hard anyone tried. 

Dean’s cell phone began to ring as they walked to the Impala. He quickly answered it and came to a stop next to the car. Lily tried to put her ear next to the phone so she could listen in on the conversation, but she was far too short to reach. Slightly annoyed, she crossed her arms over her chest and turned back to Sam and Adam. 

Sam was attempting to scrape some chewed up gum off the bottom of his shoe using a broken sewer grate, while Adam was making disgusted noises as he realized he’d just stepped into dog crap. Lily couldn’t stop the grin that formed on her face; this was just too damn funny. She put her hand over her mouth to try and muffle her giggles. The giggling made her nose ache as her bruised skin was tugged and moved, but she ignored it, having become more used to it as the day went on. Suddenly, as he was trying to rub the crap off his shoe, Adam lost his balance. He toppled over and landed on the ground with a squish. Lily’s jaw dropped as she realized what had caused the squishing noise: Adam had just fallen on top of the dog crap. Failing to control herself, Lily doubled over and held her stomach as she laughed - loud and unapologetic. Adam let out a string of loud curses as he stood back up, and Lily figured that maybe this birthday hadn’t been all bad. 

A splash to the left caught Lily’s attention. She looked over at Sam and noticed he was now sporting only one shoe. Her laughter intensified at this - real, unapologetic, laughter. It was laughter that wasn’t being held back, the kind that Lily hadn’t had in a long time. She couldn’t help but notice just how good it felt. 

Sam had knelt down to try and get his shoe out of the sewer, but it was too far down to reach. He stood back up, looking thoroughly defeated. Lily soon calmed down, sending both of her brothers a grin, but she was only met with matching glares. 

Dean ended his phone call, hanging up and stuffing his phone into one of his pockets. He turned back around and noticed the look on Sam’s face and the way Adam was wiping off his jacket. “What?” He asked them, eyebrows raised.

“I lost my shoe,” Sam spoke.

Lily giggled, again. “And Adam fell in dog crap.” She felt a punch on her shoulder and she threw a sharp glare at Adam as she rubbed at it, knowing it was him. He continued to glare at her, but she ignored him.

Dean turned back toward the Impala, sighing. 

“Adam, you smell like shit,” Lily commented, scrunching up her nose in disgust.

“Thanks, Lils.”

Not long after they had arrived back at the motel, Dean on the phone with Bobby once again. Lily had argued with her brothers and had actually managed to be allowed to sit in the front seat, Sam being booted to the back with Adam. It was part of her birthday celebration, she supposed, but she had really wanted to sit as far away from Adam as possible. He needed to just throw out that jacket; it was torn a bit and had small splats of dried blood on it, too. It wasn’t worth it anymore.

“All right, Bobby, thanks. We owe you - another one,” Dean spoke into his phone as the Impala came to a stop. “All right, Bobby’s got it on pretty good authority that this Bela chick lives in Queens,” He explained, after shoving his phone back into his pocket. “So, it’ll take me about two hours to get there.” 

“So, what are we doing then?” Sam asked from the seat behind Lily. 

“Both of you are staying here, ‘cause I don’t want your bad luck gettin’ us killed.” Lily chuckled; now look who wasn’t allowed to even go hunting anymore. “And Lily is gonna be watchin’ you guys.”

Lily sent Dean a look. “What?” She asked. “I want to go with you! I wanna hunt, not babysit!” She exclaimed, angrily. 

Dean chuckled. “Welcome to my life, Sis,” He said, sarcastically.

“I’m serious, Dean! Don’t you need backup or something?” 

“They need you more than I do.” 

“Dean, Lily’s right, this is dumb. I don’t need my little sister to babysit me!” Adam added in, equally as annoyed. Both Sam and Adam were being treated like little kids, which was admittedly entertaining, but it was now becoming annoying. Now she couldn’t go to Queens with Dean because of it.

The four of them entered the motel room, the three youngest feeling incredibly annoyed at the current predicament. Dean immediately headed over to the table and pulled two dining chairs out, setting them side by side. He dragged Adam and Sam over to the chairs, ignoring their complaints, and sat them down. 

“I want you both to sit here and don’t move, okay? Don’t turn off the light, don’t turn on the light, don’t even scratch your nose,” Dean ordered them, then he turned to Lily. “Watch them, make sure they don’t die.” Lily said nothing. She just glared up at him, her arms crossed over her chest. She would claim that she wasn’t bitter, but she was. 

Dean quickly left, shutting the door behind him. 

Sam immediately began to scratch at his nose, doing exactly what Dean had just told him not to.

“Hey!” Lily exclaimed, sending Sam a stern look. “Dean literally just said not to do that! I swear if either of you guys die on my watch I’m gonna kill you.” Babysitting - or,  _ brother _ sitting? - was already harder than it looked. She should be getting paid to do this, she thought to herself. 

The three of them sat in silence for a few moments. 

“Jesus Christ, this is gonna be the most boring four hours ever.” It was one thing to be stuck in a car for hours on end - at least there she didn’t have to keep an eye on her incompetent brothers, she was able to think about other things, and she was able to listen to music. Right now she wasn’t able to do anything of that. She had to watch her siblings and make sure they didn’t knock themselves out or anything dumb like that; it was honestly like having to keep two-year-olds from hurting themselves. 

Lily wanted to scream. It had been two hours of  _ nothing _ \- two hours of boring. She was going to explode before Dean got back. Sam kept leaning back on his chair, which could end up with him cracking his head open if he fell, and Adam kept jiggling his leg up and down, which was just plain annoying. If she didn’t explode, Lily was gonna end up banging her head against the wall. Babysitting was exhausting. 

All of a sudden, Lily heard their air conditioner sputter and die. This wasn’t what she had wanted. With a groan, Lily went over to inspect the broken device. “You guys and your damn bad luck,” She muttered beneath her breath. Leaning down, Lily pressed a few of the buttons, but none of them worked. It began to release light, grey smoke into the room and Lily looked back at her brothers with her eyes widened. Smoke meant fire, right? This was  _ not _ how Lily had planned to die - not by a long shot. She wasn’t about to be killed by an air conditioner, that was just lame. She sent her brothers a panicked look; she didn’t know anything about air conditioners. 

Sam went to stand up, but Lily began to shout at him. “Sit down! Just tell me what to do from there.” She didn’t need him breaking a leg on top of this. 

“Maybe, I don’t know, try using the blanket to stop it?” Sam suggested, forming his words as more of a question than anything. 

Lily raised an eyebrow at him, but shrugged and headed to the nearest bed, ripping the blanket from it. She went back to the smoking air conditioner and began to hit it with the blanket, trying to stop it from smoking. Once the smoke died down, Lily dropped the blanket to the floor with a relieved sigh, glad that nothing too horrible had happened. 

She’d spoken too soon.

As she was standing back up, Lily felt something strange on her arm. Looking down, she noticed that her sleeve had caught on fire. Completely panicking now, Lily began to shriek. Sam and Adam immediately rushed over, ignoring their orders to stay put, and began to try and put it out. Adam grabbed the large curtain from the window and began to pat Lily’s arm with it, effectively putting out the fire, only to trip over his own feet and bring Sam and Lily down with him. All three of them hit their heads on the floor - hard. On a normal day their falls wouldn’t have been too bad, maybe a few bruises, but with Sam and Adam’s bad luck it caused them all to lose consciousness. 

When Lily woke up, sporting a massive headache, she was duct taped to a chair. Confused and groggy, she looked up to see an older man with sandy blonde hair. Eyebrows furrowed, Lily took in her surroundings: she was still in the motel room, albeit duct taped, and Adam and Sam were in the two chairs next to her. They’d been kidnapped, but she had no clue who these guys were and why they would want to kidnap them. She tried to rack her brain to figure out what they’d ever done to them, but she couldn’t remember ever seeing them before. Looking to her right, Lily realized she was the only one awake; their bad luck must’ve meant they’d hit their heads harder than Lily had. It was their bad luck that had caused Lily to get knocked out in the first place, she thought, bitterly. If Sam had never touched the rabbit’s foot this hunt would’ve been a lot easier. She certainly wouldn’t be covered in multiple dark purple bruises, that’s for sure. 

“Oh, the girl’s awake,” The blonde man standing in front of her exclaimed. He grinned at her and Lily forced herself to not panic, to not be afraid. “Welcome back,” He said, now smirking at her. “We’ll wait for your brothers to wake up before we explain.”

Adam and Sam were both awake within the next few minutes, groaning in pain and looking around in confusion. Lily said nothing to either of them; she just threw them both glares, showing her clear annoyance at the situation they had both gotten her into. 

Admittedly, Lily felt a lot safer once her brothers were awake. Despite the curse, Lily felt more comfortable knowing that she wasn’t alone in this, that her brothers were there to protect her - although she had a feeling that she might have to be the one to protect  _ them _ if it came down to it. 

Looks like Sam and Adam actually did need her. 

“We didn’t even have to knock you guys out,” The other man, this one a brunet, commented. “You guys just went all spastic and knocked yourselves out. It was like watching Jerry Lewis trying to stack chairs.” Lily didn’t know who Jerry Lewis was, but she figured it wasn’t important.

“Sorry, not sorry, but who the hell are you?” Lily asked, raising her eyebrows at them. She sounded a lot braver than she felt, even with her brothers at her side. 

The sandy blonde haired man snapped his fingers at her. “I used to think your friend Gordon sent me,” He said. 

Lily groaned. Gordon Walker had been a hunter who had tortured an innocent woman for information, something that she and her brothers were very much against. Lily hadn’t actually met Gordon, considering she still hadn’t been allowed on many hunts last year, but her brothers had told her about him. He had killed his own sister, something that Lily couldn’t even begin to try and understand. How could someone just kill their own sibling like that? When Lily thought of her own siblings, she could never picture herself hurting them like that - not ever.

“Gordon asked me to track you down, Sam, and put a bullet in your brain,” The sandy haired man continued. Lily’s breath hitched as he said this; now Sam’s life was even more at risk than it already was. Her brothers were good people, they didn’t deserve to die, and she couldn’t even fathom the thought of it actually happening.

“Great,” Sam said, sarcastically.

“But,” The man continued, paying no mind to Sam. “As it turns out, I’m on a mission from God.” 

Lily furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, but she didn’t have much time to digest this as the man punched Sam in the face, knocking him out cold. 

“Hey!” Adam yelled, angrily. His face was turning red and his fists were clenched at his sides, where they were still duct taped down. “Don’t touch him!” The man punched Adam in the face as well, just for this remark, and Adam fell unconscious. Damn that bad luck, Lily thought to herself.

Lily looked back up at the men, trying to not make them angry with her. “A mission from God?” She asked, skeptically. Okay, maybe this wasn’t the best thing to say when she was trying to stay on their good side, but she was curious. 

“Yes, he chose me,” The sandy haired man said, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Lily raised an eyebrow. “To do what?”

The man didn’t reply, he just went over to the kitchen area and filled up a glass of water. Moving back to Sam, whose face had begun to bruise from the punch, he splashed the water onto his face, awaking him instantly. He repeated the process with Adam, and Lily failed to see the point of knocking them out was - for fun?  

“You were part of that demon plan to open the gate, weren’t you?” The man asked Sam. 

“We did everything we could to stop it,” Sam replied, instantly. 

“Lie, lie, lie!” The man exclaimed, and Lily couldn’t help but think that he was insane. “You were in on it. You know what their next move is, too, don’t you?” 

Sam, still dripping with water, glared at the duo. “No, I don’t, okay? You’re wrong about all of this.” 

“We tried to stop it,” Adam chimed in, also still dripping. “We spent  _ months _ trying to stop it all, I swear.”

“Where are they gonna hit us next?”  He asked Sam, ignoring Adam’s remarks. Sam sighed, refusing to answer, which angered him. “Where?” He asked, slapping Sam across the face. 

Sam sucked in a sharp breath, wincing in pain.

“Stop it! We don’t know!” Lily yelled, struggling to break free from the duct tape, but she wasn’t nearly strong enough.

“Shut it!” The brunet man snapped at her. 

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Adam snapped. 

“Gordon told me all about you, Sam, about your powers. You’re some kind of weirdo psychic freak.” 

“No, not anymore,” Sam said, truthfully. “No powers, no visions - nothing.”

“Lie!” The sandy haired man yelled, punching Sam in the face. 

Lily, now growing more and more frustrated, continued to try and break out from the duct tape, but she was still too weak. What the hell was duct tape even made of? As she struggled, Lily caught a flash of yesterday morning, when she had been struggling to rip the duct tape off her birthday present and had used her pocket knife. Remembering that her pocket knife had been in her jeans’ pocket, Lily tried to reach into her pocket and grab it. It was a bit too out of her reach. Anger rising, she strained herself to grab it, her wrist beginning to hurt from the effort. Thankfully, she reached it and pulled it from her pocket stealthily, seeing as the men were preoccupied with Sam. 

They were dumb for not noticing the pocket knife in her jeans when they’d patted them down -  _ if _ they had patted them down. Maybe her luck wasn’t all bad? Maybe Sam and Adam’s bad luck wasn’t always affecting her? Lily didn’t understand how it worked, considering she didn’t have a rabbit’s foot rule book, but she was just thankful that the men had overlooked her front pocket. 

Tuning out the conversation between Sam and the man, Lily began to cut through the duct tape near her hand, but she had to turn her hand at an odd angle to be able to do so. Powering through her growing discomfort, Lily continued to saw through the tape, trying to stay as silent as possible. It was gonna be a long shot, considering they had wrapped the tape around her three times, but maybe she could loosen it enough to be able to break free. 

But, even if she did, her brothers still had bad luck which meant  _ she _ had sort-of bad luck, so there would be no way in Hell that she’d be able to take down two 6’0” men without her gun, which she had left on the table a few feet away. Despite this, she knew that she couldn’t just do nothing.

Lily had made considerable progress when she heard Dean’s voice from the doorway. She quickly tuned back into the conversation. “Nope. No destiny, just a rabbit’s foot.” Despite the seriousness of the situation, Lily couldn’t help but grin as she saw her brother. He would always come to save the day, she thought to herself. 

“Put the gun down, son,” The sandy haired man, who had a gun pointed at Sam’s head, spoke. “Or you’re gonna be scraping brain off the wall.”

“Oh, this thing?” Dean asked, motioning to his gun. 

The man nodded. “Yeah, that thing.”

“Okay,” Dean said, setting the gun down, and Lily realized that he must’ve gotten the rabbit’s foot back. He must have good luck, which meant Lily sort-of did, too. She began to cut through the duct tape more quickly. “But, see, there’s something about me that you don’t know.” He picked a motel pen off the table. 

“Yeah?” The man asked, now turning around and pointing his gun at Dean. “And what would that be?”

“It’s my lucky day,” Dean spoke, a small smile forming on his lips. He tossed the pen at the man and it perfectly flew into the gun, jamming it. “Oh my god, did you see that shot?” Lily grinned as the men looked incredibly confused. 

She quickly figured that this was as good a time as any to break free, so she did. Ripping the duct tape from where it had been cut through, Lily managed to free herself - it was a lot easier than it should’ve been, but that was probably due to the good luck. She quickly got to her feet, drawing the attention of the brunet man. He advanced on her, reeling his fist back to punch her, but she stuck her foot out and he tripped. The man went crashing to the floor, getting knocked out as his head broke his fall. She grinned, loving the feeling of taking a guy out with minimal effort. Dean picked up the T.V remote off the same table and chucked it at the other man, knocking him out as well. 

“I’m Batman,” Dean said, after a pause. Lily grinned at him, running to him and pulling him into a tight hug. She always felt so elated when they took down the bad guy, or when her brothers did at least, considering she wasn’t really ready to take down the bad guy by herself just yet. 

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, sarcastically. “You’re Batman.”

“Hell yeah, you are,” Lily said to Dean, Sam’s sarcasm going over her head.

“You were pretty awesome, too, kiddo,” Dean complemented, hugging her back. “You knocked one of ‘em out.”

Lily pulled away from the hug, still grinning. “Hell yeah I did.”

Once Lily and Dean had gotten the duct tape off of their brothers, Adam turned to Lily, looking a bit serious. Lily’s eyebrows furrowed as she saw his expression, not knowing what he was going to say.

“Look, I know you don’t think I do, but I do care about Dean’s deal, okay?” Adam said, looking and sounding genuine. Besides, Lily could tell when her brother was lying. He was an excellent liar, it was part of being a hunter, but everyone had tells for when they lied and Lily knew Adam’s - he was being genuine. “He’s my brother and I -” He trailed off, looking conflicted. “I care about him, obviously. I’ve just . . I’ve been trying to not think about it.” 

Lily nodded. “Me too,” She admitted. “It’s hard to think about. I don’t know how I could live without any of you guys. I don’t know how we lived without Sam for four years.”

Adam nodded in agreement or maybe understanding, and he pulled her in for a quick hug. He pulled away seconds later. “No chick flick moments, Lils.” He sounded so much like Dean in that moment that, if she hadn’t been looking at him, she would’ve thought that it had been Dean speaking. Him and Dean both had deep, kind of gruff voices, but Adam’s was admittedly more high-pitched still. The two of them were still incredibly similar, and sometimes Lily forgot that they were only half-siblings; Adam seemed a lot more like Sam and Dean than Lily felt she herself was. They all looked quite similar, even though Sam had darker hair, but Lily looked different. Maybe it was because she was half Latina, but she just felt like she was so much more different than they were. She knew she was being stupid for thinking this, but she just felt like an outsider to them at times.

Lily playfully punched him on the arm. “You started it, asshole.” 

Hours later,  the four siblings were at a cemetery using the solution Bobby had come up with to get rid of the foot for good. Sam sprinkled the last ingredient onto the fire before tightening the lid onto the jar. “All right,” He spoke, standing up. “Bone ash, Cayenne pepper - that should do it.”

Dean was paying no attention to his brother, more preoccupied with his lottery tickets. Adam was looking over his shoulder as he scratched, trying to figure out how much money they’d won. “One second,” Dean said.

“Dean,” Sam groaned. 

“Hey, back off, Jinx. I’m bringing home the bacon.”

Lily smiled. “We’re so gonna be rich, this is great,” She remarked, ignoring the look Sam threw her. 

Dean stuck the lotto tickets in his jacket pocket, which was laying on top of a nearby grave. “All right.” He grabbed the rabbit’s foot from the other pocket and held it up. “Say goodbye to ‘wascawy wabbit’.”

Suddenly, Lily heard the tell-tale sound of a gun cocking. All four of them whipped around, coming face-to-face with Bela, the girl who had stolen the rabbit’s foot from them in the diner. Lily glared at her. Damn her and her sticky fingers and her perfect boobs for getting them into this situation, Lily thought to herself. Her eyes quickly widened as she realized what she’d thought.  _ Perfect boobs?  _ Why had she thought that? Lily quickly tossed these thoughts aside, pretending like they hadn’t happened.

“I think you’ll find that that belongs to me,” Bela spoke in a smooth British accent, pointing a gun at them. “Or, you know, . . . whatever.” There was a pause where they all just stared at her, and she stared back. “Put the foot down, honey,” She told Dean, a smile on her face.

“No,” Dean said, defiantly. “You’re not gonna shoot anybody. See, I happen to be able to read people.” He was repeating exactly what he’d said to the man in the apartment building. “Okay, you’re a thief - fine. But you’re not -” He was cut off as Bela shot Sam in the shoulder.

Sam collapsed to the ground, and Lily quickly knelt down beside him to check if he was okay. Face contorted in pain and teeth clenched, Sam claimed he was fine. 

“Son of a -” Dean moved towards Bela, but stopped abruptly as she spoke.

“Back off, tiger,” She snapped at him. “Back off. Any of you make another move and I’ll pull the trigger.” Lily helped Sam clamber to his feet. “You’ve got the luck, Dean, you I can’t hit. But your brothers? Them I can’t miss.” Despite the anger she felt as this, Lily couldn’t help but admit it was incredibly smart. Damn her.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dean exclaimed, loudly. “You don’t just go around shooting people like that!” 

“Relax; it’s a shoulder hit, I can aim. Besides, who here hasn’t shot a few people?” Bela asked, rhetorically. Lily racked her brain to remember a time where she  _ had _ actually shot an actual person, but she couldn’t - not that that really mattered, of course. “Put the rabbit’s foot on the ground,  _ now _ .”

“All right!” Dean yelled, putting his hands up. “All right. Take it easy.” Dean began to lower the foot to the ground. “Think fast,” He said, throwing the foot at Bela. Bela instinctively caught it, transferring the luck from Dean to her. Lily smirked; she’d have to burn it now. 

“Damn,” Bela muttered beneath her breath. 

“All right, let’s destroy that piece of crap now,” Adam suggested, before turning to the fire that stood behind him.

The five of them gathered around the fire and Bela tossed the foot in, looking extremely annoyed about it. Lily really couldn’t blame her; that thing was worth millions of dollars. At least they still had the lottery tickets.

The foot began to burn, golden sparks flying from it as its powers were destroyed. 

“Thanks very much,” Bela said, sarcasm practically oozing from her voice. “I’m out one and a half million and on the bad side of a very powerful, fairly psychotic buyer.” 

“Wow, I really don’t feel bad about that,” Dean replied. “Sam? Ads? Lils? How ‘bout you?”

“Nope,” Lily agreed.

“No,” Sam replied. “Not even a little.”

“Sucks to suck,” Adam added, smirking.

Bela walked away, but turned back around and leaned against a nearby grave. “Maybe next time I’ll leave  _ you _ out to dry.”

“Oh, don’t go away angry, just go away,” Dean said, and Lily couldn’t help but agree. The sooner she was gone, the better.

“Have a nice night, boys,” Bela replied, before leaving.

“I’m a girl!” Lily yelled after her, throwing her hands up in the air in annoyance.

Once the rabbit’s foot had fully burned the four of them headed back to the Impala, Sam still holding his gun shot wound. He’d been carrying their shovel with them, but Adam had taken pity on him and carried it for him. 

“You good?” Dean asked Sam as he lead the way back to the car. 

“I’ll live.” Sam sounded so defeated and Lily honestly couldn’t blame him; he’d been through more crap these past two days than she had, and she herself was feeling the exact same way.

“Guess we’re back to normal now,” Dean commented.   
“Whatever normal is,” Lily muttered to herself.

“No good luck, no bad luck,” Dean continued, having not heard Lily’s comment.

“At least we’ve got the lottery tickets, though,” Adam said, a grin spreading across his face. Lily’s grin quickly matched his as she realized that they were gonna have so much money once they cashed those things in. There was one good thing that came out of this besides seeing Adam covered in dog crap. 

“Oh, I forgot.” Dean patted his jacket pocket, looking for the lotto tickets, a grin plastered on his face. “We’re at 46,000 dollars.” He continued to pat down his pockets, but he came up empty-handed.

He had lost them. 

As Bela’s car drove past, she beeped at them a few times and it suddenly clicked in Lily’s head. Dean hadn’t lost them.

Bela had stolen them.

Lily’s jaw dropped and she made eye contact with each of her brothers. She couldn’t believe this. They were out almost fifty grand. Fifty-thousand-dollars was now down the freakin’ drain, as if these past two days hadn’t been bad enough.

“Son of a bitch!” Dean screamed.

The next morning Lily was in the motel bathroom, sitting on top of the toilet seat. She had just wanted a bit of privacy, and the bathroom was the only real place she was ever able to get it. She didn’t have a bedroom or anything like it, so when she wanted private moments she was forced to find solace in a grungy, old motel bathroom.

In her hands, Lily held the photograph she’d found of her mother. She had tried to understand why her father hadn’t given this to her, but maybe he just hadn’t looked through the boxes carefully enough? Despite that, Lily was so glad that she had this picture now. She had never known what her mother had looked like, what physical features Lily had gotten from her mother besides her hair and eyes. Now, after analyzing the picture in more depth, Lily could see more similarities between the two of them. They had quite similar noses (you know, when Lily’s wasn’t bruised and swollen) and, even better, the same smile. Everytime she smiled from now on she would think of her mother and her smile, their matching smiles. It felt nice to be able to feel a connection between herself and her mother for the first time ever. It felt nice to be able to have a part of her mother with her, even if it was just a smile. It meant a lot to Lily, who hadn’t known of this connection up until now, who had never truly had a mother in her life. 

Lily stood up to look at herself in the mirror. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, her busted up nose, and her mother’s smile stared back at her. Her soft smile soon turned to a grin, but it was short lived. Life was unfair -  _ too _ unfair to Lily - and it made her angry. There were so many awful people in this world that had mothers who loved them, who were still alive, but Lily was a good person - despite what others thought and despite what she herself thought at times - and she didn’t have a mother. That was just unfair. She didn’t get to choose if she wanted to be part of a hunter family, she didn’t choose if she wanted a mother or not, she didn’t choose if she wanted any of this - not really. She didn’t get to choose anything, and none of it was fair.

Still looking at herself in the mirror, Lily knew what she did get to choose, what no one else could have a say in. 

It was going to be  _ her  _ choice and her choice alone.

And her brothers were going to hate it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I had said that this chapter was gonna be more happy but I guess I lied because Lily has a breakdown in this one, too, but what’s new? The good news is that she definitely won’t be doing that every chapter, especially as she begins to control her emotions more as she grows older. Anyway, I’ve got some good foreshadowing going on in this chapter, but I’m not gonna say what they are haha. But I am definitely laying down the groundwork for a plot in season 4, which you can probably already guess. Also, this ended on a little bit of a cliffhanger ooooh haha. I had Lily say stuff about Buffalo because that's where I'm from !! Which, by the way, Queens is 6 hours from Buffalo so what the heck @ Supernatural ?? Anyway,,,
> 
> Thanks to you all for sticking with me through these long waits, I know it sucks! Believe me, I know, but life gets in the way a lot. The good news is that summer is about to officially begin for me! Hopefully, that will mean more updates!
> 
> As always, if you want to stay more updated with me and this story, you can follow Lily’s tumblr! Especially if you have any questions about Sink or Swim, about Lily, or about me as I’m easier to reach on there. Brilliantlily. Tumblr . com :)


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